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Masters of French Literature 



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Masters of 
French Literature 



, BY 

GEORGE McLEAN HARPER 

PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
■*4 



HE LIBRARY 
Qf5e«£&|feR£$$ 

Charles Scribner's Sons 
1901 



COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



THE LIBRARY Of 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

MAR 20 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS ftAxc. N» 

COPY B. 



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«• * t * 



UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON 
AND 90N • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



TO MY WIFE 



Preface 

It may not be amiss t^ give a preliminary 
hint to the reader as to the general purpose 
of the following essays. To the mind of their 
writer they possess a certain consistency, 
which he wishes his reader might bear in 
mind from the outset, rather than realize at 
the end or never perceive at all. So unified 
is French literature, so intimate are the myriad 
relations of all its parts to the whole, that it is 
possible to gain a fairly comprehensive view 
of any one of its periods of development by 
considering a representative man of letters who 
then was a dominant figure. What we learn 
from him and about him will open up vistas 
in all directions. We shall become acquainted 
no less with his environment than with the 
man himself. The essentials of French literary 
history, — the interesting and vital features, 
— from the eleventh century to the twentieth, 
might be comprised under a brief succes- 
vii 



PREFACE 

sion of illuminating titles : we may view the 
total landscape from a score of observatories. 
The " Chanson de Roland " is not a solitary 
peak, and from its hoary eminence we may 
gaze down upon the tumbled masses of the 
whole vast epical period, and locate them with 
reference to their chief. The noble group 
of the three mediaeval chroniclers might 
be measured from one summit, — Villehar- 
douin, Joinville, or Froissart. The medi- 
aeval lyric poetry would be seen sufficiently 
from the slender spire of aspiration which 
Villon reared above the mud of Paris and his 
own degradation. Mediaeval humor and phi- 
losophy, and the dawn of the Renaissance, 
might be studied from the broad platform of 
Rabelais. The placid valley where Ronsard 
sang of love, and the vale where Du Bellay 
breathed the sweet air of Anjou, can still be 
made to echo the artistic questions, the de- 
bates about diction and metre, which inter- 
ested the sixteenth century. A glance from 
the windows of Montaigne's library tower 
beside the Garonne might at least arouse our 
curiosity as to the philosophical tendencies of 
that age and the extent of the New Learning. 



PREFACE 

From five points of vantage — Pascal, La 
Fontaine and Boileau, Moliere, Corneille and 
Racine, and La Bruyere and Madame de 
Sevigne — one might obtain a reasonably com- 
plete triangulation of the great seventeenth- 
century literature. The full horizon of the 
eighteenth century might be swept, and almost 
all notable French writers and literary tenden- 
cies of that important time be included, in 
three turns of the glass, — towards Saint-Simon 
and Montesquieu, towards Voltaire, and 
towards Rousseau. For the nineteenth cen- 
tury, owing to the increased diversity of the 
landscape, the survey would require more 
points of observation ; and even with a very 
close scrutiny, there are some exalted hills 
and delectable valleys which would be sure to 
escape enumeration. Yet a rough map of the 
country might be sketched, from stations that 
should bear the names Hugo, Musset, George 
Sand and Dumas pere, Sainte-Beuve, Bal- 
zac, Augier and Dumas fils, and Daudet 
and Zola. Sometimes two names would be 
united in one title because of a community 
of spirit, and sometimes because of the in- 
viting contrast. 

ix 



PREFACE 

For the general reader, I fancy such a his- 
tory of French literature would be far more 
illuminating than some of the detailed hand- 
books which bewilder the mind with thousands 
of names and titles, and brief, insufficient ab- 
stracts of books great and small. There would 
be the difference that exists between a series 
of views from twenty mountain tops, each one 
within sight of its immediate neighbors, and 
the record made by a pedometer. Or, to vary 
this rather prolonged figure of speech which 
has helped us thus far, such a history would 
possess the advantage that a person gains 
from residence in a few foreign towns, as 
compared with spending an equal amount of 
time in rapid travel, from one meaningless 
hotel to another. 

This volume of essays, of course, makes no 
claim to give a general outlook over the two 
centuries which lie between Corneille and 
Balzac. Yet the book may perhaps be re- 
garded as an imperfect illustration of the 
method outlined above. The absence of 
any substantive treatment of Rousseau and 
his followers would at once preclude preten- 
sion to systematic completeness, though the 



PREFACE 

references to him, in the essay on Saint-Simon 
and Montesquieu, are designed to indicate 
the nature and importance of his influence. 

Several of the essays are here reprinted, 
after more or less radical revision. Thanks 
are due in this connection to Messrs. Henry 
Holt & Company. 

Princeton University, 
February, 1901. 



XI 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Place of French Literature . 3 

The Golden Age of French Drama ... 41 
The Revolutionary Analysis — Saint-Simon 

and Montesquieu 87 

The Revolutionary Analysis — Voltaire . 125 «*•** 

Victor Hugo 169 

Sainte-Beuve 219 

Balzac ...... 279 



THE 
PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 



THE 
PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The pre-eminence of French literature over 
its modern rivals has been complacently taken 
for granted by most Frenchmen. There is 
something not unnatural — indeed, there is 
something worthy of respect — in this view, 
even though their manner of putting it may 
irritate or amuse. French national vanity 
has been gratified by many eminent writers, 
from Voltaire to M. Brunetiere, at no small 
sacrifice of true perspective. Yet they have 
made brilliant and interesting comparisons 
between their own national literary product 
and that of Italy, Spain, Germany, and Eng- 
land, and one would hesitate to blame them 
for drawing chiefly self-flattering conclusions, 
if only they were less narrow in their meth- 
ods, and did not follow one another so 
closely in their reading of foreign works. 
For what value has an estimate of Italian 
literature which is based almost entirely 
upon a knowledge of Tasso and Ariosto, 
with Dante omitted ? What ground of com- 

3 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

parison is furnished by an acquaintance 
with English literature through Shakespeare, 
Pope, Addison, and Byron only? And what 
are the chances of progress in the views of 
French critics, if they pursue merely the tra- 
ditional round of English or Italian reading? 

A foreigner's conception of the place of 
French literature may be equally ill bal- 
anced; but if so, it will be from some other 
cause than inability to appreciate anything 
that is not French. There are several excel- 
lent reasons why it may be useful to make 
a survey of the general relations of French 
literature. It may be that we entertain a 
high opinion of its merits, and wish to re- 
view the grounds of our liking; or we may 
want to consider, in the presence of so many 
claims for various studies, whether it is worth 
while, as much as ever, to read French. To 
diminish the danger which such an attempt 
invites, we must guard against merely con- 
ventional estimates, and leave out of account 
those authors whom, in some mysterious 
way, we have come to hold in honor with- 
out having really felt their power, or per- 
haps even read them. 

We are concerned with only so much of 
our own and of foreign literature as is vital 

4 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

to us now for purposes of general culture. 
Of Italian literature, a well-educated French- 
man might say Boccaccio, Tasso, and Ariosto 
were vital to him ; but if he added Dante he 
would not be truly representative of his 
countrymen. We Americans and English, 
for our part, should perhaps say the " Divine 
Comedy/' parts of the " Decameron, " a very 
few of Petrarch's sonnets, and something of 
Manzoni and Leopardi ; if we added Tasso 
and Ariosto it would be singular. Of French 
literature a much larger quantity is acces- 
sible to us and full of life, yet we must 
be careful not to speak of even such great 
men as Pascal, Racine, Bossuet, and Saint- 
Simon as if their works were really our 
daily bread. And we must avoid taking for 
granted that to Frenchmen all of English 
literature can mean what it does to us. In- 
deed, if we are frank, we shall admit that 
a large part of our literature has ceased to 
yield much sustenance even to us, whether 
through its remoteness or our own fault. 

French literature possesses a signal advan- 
tage in the fact that a very large proportion 
of it is really vital to Frenchmen, and that 
most of what they enjoy we foreigners may 
also relish. It is easier in the case of 

5 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

French than in the case of English to say 
what is literature. The national genius has 
led to the maintenance of a rigid censorship 
by the highest courts of public opinion, — 
the Academy, the centralized system of edu- 
cation, and especially the most cultivated 
circles of Parisian readers. A few eminent 
critics and a succession of women distin- 
guished for wit and taste have been the 
acknowledged jurists in these matters. The 
conventions thus established decide between 
excellent and inferior work, between the per- 
manent and the ephemeral. The debates are 
long and minute; but when once the bounda- 
ries are sharply fixed, no educated person in 
France is exempt from reading the approved 
authors. A time limit is also set, not so 
much by convention as by convenience ; it 
is generally agreed that one is not obliged 
to be acquainted with much that was writ- 
ten before the seventeenth century, on the 
ground that the language of the sixteenth 
century was not yet really modern French. 

One result of these exclusions has been to 
render possible and necessary for Frenchmen 
a comprehensiveness of reading which is 
relatively infrequent with us, and in this way 
to supply, as it were, a national subject of 

6 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

thought, a national topic of conversation, a 
national fund of common interests. You can 
seldom be sure that more than a small minor- 
ity of an English or American audience will 
^appreciate a literary allusion; for though 
every one in the room may be well read, 
there is no telling just what he has read. In 
France you may quote from the canonized 
list of approved authors with full assurance 
of being understood by all educated persons. 

Another result is that some tincture of 
literary taste and accomplishment has pene- 
trated lower in the social mass than with us. 
Most French people, above the merely illit- 
erate, do actually know something of their 
literature for the last three hundred years. 
They go to hear the plays of Racine, Cor- 
neille, Moliere, Regnard, and Beaumarchais, 
as well as of Dumas fils and Augier. They 
are really acquainted at first-hand, however 
slightly, with Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Bos- 
suet, La Bruyere, Madame de Sevigne, La 
Fontaine, Boileau, and Saint-Simon, with 
Montesquieu, Lesage, Voltaire, and Rous- 
seau, as well as with the poets of 1830 and 
the recent novelists. 

For the last three hundred years French 
literature has maintained a sort of corporate 

7 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

existence. We find in it less diversity of type 
than in ours; and it has been possible for 
one great critic to prove it to be the homo- 
geneous product of a singularly unified peo- 
ple, and for another to trace the evolution of 
its forms. There may indeed be in the dog- 
matism of Taine and M. Brunetiere a ruthless 
severity which has blinded them to whatever 
did not accord with their theories ; but it is 
easy to see how the solidarity of French 
literature must tempt a speculative mind. 

For French literature is like a family dwell- 
ing in one great mansion. We advance to 
knock at the front door, and a troop of lively 
children flock about us on the steps. They 
are the gay farces and sparkling comedies 
and the sprightly stories which have enlivened 
the world from Moliere's time to the days of 
the elder Dumas, Scribe, and Labiche. At 
the portal, if we are wise, we shall place our- 
selves under the guidance of Sainte-Beuve ; 
for no one else is so well acquainted with the 
family history, ancient and modern, public 
and private, with genealogies and titles, with 
deeds of prowess, and with whispered scan- 
dals. He knows to a nicety the intricate 
relationships of every branch, and all degrees 
of cousinship. In his genial society we 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

wander on, through quiet firelit rooms where 
easy-slippered old gentlemen are composing 
memoirs, — Joinville in his honorable eld, 
Sully unused but active in retirement, Saint- 
Simon indignant, resentful, his head smoking 
with fervor; through the cold cells of austere 
Pascal and gentle Frangois de Sales ; through 
apartments bright with a hundred tapers, 
where the ladies of the Hdtel de Rambouillet, 
or Madame de La Fayette, or Madame Sophie 
Gay, or our guide's friend, Madame Recamier, 
receive great wits and poets. He conducts 
us finally to the throne room, or hall of 
honor, where, on gilded chairs, and with 
laurel-crowned brows, the family dignitaries 
sit in high confabulation : the king of comedy, 
sad-smiling Moliere; the kings of tragedy, 
Corneille and Racine ; the prince of preachers, 
Bossuet, with warning hand ; Montaigne, ask- 
ing hard questions ; Rabelais, himself a rid- 
dle; La Fontaine, who chafes at so much 
pomp ; Voltaire, whose vanity helps him 
endure it; Hugo, lord of many realms ; noble 
Musset; bulky Balzac. In every countenance 
some lineament proclaims the family blood. 
Fathers here are proud to own renowned 
sons, and sons to claim lineage from great 
sires. The marks of race are not to be mis- 

9 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

taken. Of adopted children there are a few, 
and in them the family traits are wanting. 
Rousseau, for one, is plainly not of this blood, 
though he does honor to the house. 

When we make the acquaintance of one 
member, we soon learn to know many. In- 
troductions fly from lip to lip, and before 
long we are at home and hospitably enter- 
tained. There is much banter and anecdote 
and gossip. It is a world in itself, for many 
inmates have never stirred abroad, and these 
four walls hold everything they love. Others 
have travelled, but with reluctance, and have 
always been glad to return. There is a family 
hierarchy and an etiquette and order of pre- 
cedence very definitely settled. Several mem- 
bers of the household, besides Sainte-Beuve, 
are enthusiastic antiquarians, and their re- 
searches are continually adding vitality to 
the family bond. 

If no other literature presents to the world 
so solid a front, the reason probably is that 
French men and women of letters, with sin- 
gularly few exceptions, have really lived in 
personal contact. Paris, at one time or 
another in their careers, has contained them 
all. Nor have social barriers been able, as a 
rule, to separate those whom common talents 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

have joined together. And the traditions of 
each generation have passed, through groups 
of intimate acquaintances, to the next. In 
marked contrast to these circumstances, the 
hearthstone of English letters has been now 
London, now Florence, now the northern 
Athens, now beside Grasmere, now Boston, 
and at times the flame has burned warm, but 
of various hues, on all at once. There is 
pathos indeed in Wordsworth's lament at the 
grave of Burns, — 

" Huge CrifrePs hoary top ascends 
By Skiddaw seen, — 
Neighbors we were, and loving friends 
We might have been." 

As the Brontes are of Yorkshire, so Jane 
Austen is of Hampshire. What an abyss in 
education and social feeling yawns between 
Charles Dickens and Walter Pater ! What 
uncongenial couples would be Keats and 
Carlyle, Swinburne and Newman ! How vain 
to attempt a search for typical English fea- 
tures in Shelley, Browning, or Landor, whose 
chief racial trait seems to be the strong deter- 
mination to have none. There is scarcely a 
French writer that cannot be classified. But 
who shall put a label on Izaak Walton, Sir 
Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, or George 

ii 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Herbert, on Samuel Johnson, Gilbert White, 
Arthur Young, or William Blake, on Thomas 
Hood or Coleridge, on William Godwin or 
Harriet Martineau, on William Morris or the 
Rossettis, on George Borrow or Sir Richard 
Burton, on Emerson, on Thoreau, on Ruskin? 

This diversity of type is but a reflection of 
the complex political, social, and religious 
life of the English-speaking world. We are 
Englishmen, Americans, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, 
Canadians, Australians; we are democrats, 
socialists, frontiersmen, feudal lords; we are 
divided into a hundred stubborn sects. Local 
pride is often stronger in us than national 
patriotism. 

As both cause and effect of the unity of 
French literature must be noted the peculiar 
zeal of the French people in literary contro- 
versy. They never weary of reading and 
writing about those matters which, as one of 
their critics declares, " are always in order." 
That Sainte-Beuve, for instance, has dis- 
coursed charmingly on some seventeenth- 
century worthy is deemed no reason why 
M. Doumic should not approach the same 
subject from another side, even though, in 
the interval, Scherer has revealed its moral 
aspect, or Taine has made it illustrate his 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

evolutionary theory. It is very properly 
assumed by the French that each generation, 
each literary school indeed, may refashion 
the past, because no single era can lay 
claim to complete knowledge or a perfect 
standard of judgment. And to systematize 
its knowledge is a necessity of the Gallic 
mind. 

So then the French may be right in saying, 
as they often do, that their great authors truly 
represent the national life, and that in their 
literature has been drawn a faithful portrait 
of the ideal Frenchman and the ideal French- 
woman. It is evident that no such state- 
ment can be for a moment maintained in 
regard to English literature. And, indeed, 
to maintain it at all rigidly in regard to 
French literature leads to strange and amus- 
ing inconsistencies. Yet not a few eminent 
critics, among them Taine and the estimable 
Nisard, have made this contention the very 
backbone of their teaching, — with what 
curious results, sometimes, the latter's " His- 
tory of French Literature " may serve as 
an illustration. Still, it is undeniable that 
French literature is singularly homogeneous, 
and that France may well be proud of the 
very definite and in the main favorable rep- 
13 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

resentation which it gives of her character 
and life. 

There must be something exhilarating to a 
Frenchman in the omnipresence of French 
books. In all civilized countries outside of 
France they enjoy a popularity second only 
to that of books in the native languages, if, 
indeed, they do not take the first place itself. 
I remember seeking Dutch books in the shops 
of Delft, and finding chiefly French. I recall 
that in a summer resort among the Apen- 
nines I could neither buy nor borrow an Ital- 
ian novel, because everybody was reading 
Daudet and Zola, Bourget, Loti, and Mau- 
passant. It is said that in the eastern states 
of Europe French works are even more prom- 
inent than in Holland and Italy; that in 
Athens, Constantinople, and the cities of 
Russia they far exceed all others in sale and 
circulation. In Norway, Sweden, and Den- 
mark, in Spain and Portugal, in Egypt, in 
Mexico and South America, the French 
novel, the French comedy, the French book 
of travel or speculation, occupy at least the 
second rank. It is only where American, 
English, or German influence prevails that 
French writing is not thus almost or alto- 
gether paramount. 

14 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Connected with this great popularity, both 
as cause and effect, is the prevalence of the 
French language. No other modern tongue 
is so much studied by aliens. German is 
perhaps studied by a larger number of Amer- 
icans, owing to the presence of a German 
population in our country, and to the influ- 
ence of the German universities upon the last 
two generations of our most ambitious young 
scholars. But in Great Britain and through- 
out the rest of the world French is the 
favorite foreign language. 

And there is another respect in which the 
ascendency of French letters is almost as 
great as this mere popular vogue. Our 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, by its antiquity, 
continuity, and vitality, is well adapted to re- 
sist foreign influence; yet it is remarkable 
for how much of recent progress in literary 
workmanship we are indebted to France. 
Every new phenomenon in French literature, 
every fresh departure in method, stimulates 
the development of theories in criticism. 
Our critics cannot afford to neglect these 
doctrines, and do in fact adopt them, with 
advantage. The French masters of the short 
story have given invaluable lessons to the 
world, in brevity, simplicity, and concentra- 
*5 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tion. One has but to investigate the sources 
of half the new plays that appear in an 
English dress, to discover that they are adap- 
tations from the French. English style is 
constantly being modified by French ex- 
ample, and often with good results in the 
direction of order and clearness. 

In spite of these titles to our favor, perhaps 
it will seem that as much as has been claimed 
for French literature might be claimed for 
Italian or German. The "Divine Comedy " 
alone easily outweighs the entire mass of 
French poetry. Yet Italian literature is, as a 
whole, less effective than French literature. 
Its current has not been so continuously well 
supplied. In prose it is comparatively very 
poor. For much of Italian prose is singularly 
unlike what one would expect the thought 
of Dante's countrymen to be; it is languid 
and obscure, not quick and vigorous. Much 
of it is deficient in intellectual substance. 
Nevertheless, the one man Dante and his in- 
comparable poem suffice to keep Italian lit- 
erature forever in the front rank. 

For all the charm of German poetry, — 
and its charm is deep, and clings in memory 
like music loved in childhood, — for all the 
tenderness and depth, the homely warmth 

16 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

and kind simplicity, which make German 
poetry so dear to us, I am not sure but that 
French prose is more likely to do us good. 
There is in our own poetry much that may 
enlarge our capacity for sentiment. And 
this, moreover, is not what we need so much 
as something to sharpen our purely intellect- 
ual faculties, — something not at all abundant 
in our own, but almost superabundant in 
French literature. To make precise distinc- 
tions, to observe rules, to cultivate artistic 
clearness, — these are habits which we may 
acquire by reading French prose. 

Italian and German thought, especially as 
expressed in poetry, have again and again 
been the refuge and inspiration of our great 
English writers ; but the influence of French 
literature has been more constant and 
broader. It has reached us all. Considering 
both quantity and quality, both good effects 
and bad, it is surely no exaggeration to say 
that French ideas and French fashions of 
writing have invaded the English mind and 
English letters more than have the thoughts 
and style of any other nation except the 
Hebrew. 

The pre-eminence of French literature in 
the non-English world has been so unques- 

2 17 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tioned that much of English literature, al- 
though at least as excellent, has been obscured 
and relegated to a second place. It would 
not be impossible, perhaps, to maintain the 
proposition that ours, in depth and serious- 
ness, in scope and variety, is the greater 
literature of the two, and indeed superior to 
any other since the Greek. Yet whereas, 
for most educated people on the Continent, 
Milton is only a name, and Wordsworth, 
Shelley, Keats, Burke, Thackeray, Haw- 
thorne, and Ruskin are but shadows, Mon- 
taigne, Moliere, Montesquieu, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, Hugo, Balzac, have wrought a 
mighty work in political and social life, and 
their thought is being woven, night and day, 
into the complex tissue of European civiliza- 
tion. There must be some peculiar quality 
in French literature which has made it thus 
universally pervasive. If it has been received 
by all other European peoples as their 
favorite foreign body of thought, the cause 
must be its adaptability to the minds of all 
men. It must be that it abounds in general 
and easily comprehended excellences. It 
must be closely connected with the unvary- 
ing realities of life. It must be remarkably 
normal to the average human intelligence. 

18 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

In short, if French literature is universally 
pervasive, it is because it is universally 
applicable. 

The character of a thing depends upon its 
origin, its environment, and the special mode 
or instrument employed in its production. 
The origin of French literature is in the 
minds of Frenchmen, and when comparing 
general traits we may speak collectively of 
the French mind. The environment in which 
this literature has been created, and by which 
it has been modified, is the life of the French 
people. The special instrument employed is 
the French language. So, to apprehend the 
causes of the peculiar adaptability of French 
literature to the world's need, we may not 
unreasonably seek them in these three fac- 
tors, — French character, French history, and 
the French tongue. 

And considering first the character of the 
average Frenchman to-day and in the past, 
and the nature of French society, we observe 
the same centrality which we have remarked 
in the literature. The French think straight. 
Their minds work along the lines of normal 
universal logic, in company with one another, 
above ground, in the full sunlight; not by 
labored processes, through subterranean cav- 
x 9 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

erns, as German minds do; not erratically, 
like a river, now hiding in the sands, then 
sparkling forth again, as do Russian minds; 
not paddling along in personal seclusion, 
like tortoises, each with his own house on 
his back, as do the minds of Englishmen. 
French thought is simple and direct, and so are 
French manners. This is why the etiquette 
of French society has become the accepted 
form of intercourse in most other civilized 
countries. It is a mistake to think of the French 
as excessive or artificial in their expression of 
politeness. It is rather in German, Scandi- 
navian, and Spanish social circles that unrea- 
sonable formalities persist. And two French 
traits — traits, moreover, which have a close 
connection with literary production — are 
the desire to please and the artistic instinct. 
The Frenchman is fond of producing satis- 
faction, — partly from genuine kindliness, and 
partly because it reflects credit upon himself. 
His artistic instinct comes to the aid of his 
love of pleasing, so that if he wishes to give 
flowers to a lady, he will not thrust them at 
her, in an awkward handful, but lay them 
gracefully at her feet, in a well-ordered bou- 
quet. If he has occasion to sing a song, or ride 
a horse> or write a letter, he will be at pains 

20 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

to avoid a shabby performance. He would 
be humiliated if he misspelled a word or 
wrote it illegibly. 

Thus the French seek for their thought an 
interesting form, lucid, readily diffusible, and 
therefore practical. They are led naturally to 
a dramatic rather than a philosophical expres- 
sion of their thought, because the dramatic 
form is more immediately telling. Their 
thought is expressed also in general rather 
than technical terms, and is therefore more 
widely understood. It aims at simplicity rather 
than completeness, and thus avoids anything 
like pedantry. French thought may often be 
vague and peculiar enough before it has 
reached artistic expression, but when moulded 
into form it stands out free from eccentricity. 
Whatever is fantastic is not French. The 
French have also a horror of obtrusive indi- 
viduality, and one of their strongest terms of 
reprobation is to say of a man, " C'est un 
original.'' It is in a measure true of them, 
and truer of them, perhaps, than of any other 
people, that 

" The individual withers, and the world is more and 
more." 

Of the second factor, the environment, 
determined chiefly by political change, by 
21 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

history, it is enough to say that in the three 
great phases of institutional development 
since the fall of the Roman Empire — feu- 
dalism, absolutism, democracy — France has 
been the initiatory and typical example. The 
feudal system was first and most fully devel- 
oped in France, and introduced thence into 
England at the Conquest. It was Louis XI. 
who first broke the power of the barons, in 
which feudalism consisted, and Louis XIV. 
who perfected his work and became the most 
absolute personal sovereign that western 
Europe has known. It was the French phi- 
losophers of the eighteenth century who 
undermined the royal power in France, and 
through Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, 
and Benjamin Franklin effected the theoreti- 
cal preparations for the American Revolution, 
which otherwise might indeed have been an 
armed protest against taxation, but would 
hardly have resulted in a refusal, on principle, 
of allegiance to King George. The slower 
process of reform by act of Parliament has, 
to be sure, given the England of to-day a 
freer government than republican France 
possesses or has ever possessed ; but it must 
not be forgotten that the American Revolu- 
tion and the French Revolution forced the 

22 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tardy hand of English legislation, and that 
many solid British liberties, acquired in peace 
and quietness, are indirectly due to the " red 
fool-fury of the Seine/' 

Until recently, French affairs have ever 
been foremost in European politics, and to 
write of French kings or French generals or 
French diplomacy has been to address the 
world on subjects in which it was interested. 
Thus we may attribute to French history the 
same quality of centrality which we found to 
belong to French character, and once more 
infer that this may well be a cause of the 
universal applicability and acceptability of 
French literature. 

In one great historical movement, however, 
France has not occupied as prominent a 
place as Germany and England ; namely, in 
the religious and moral Reformation which 
became widespread in the sixteenth century, 
and is still operative in all Teutonic coun- 
tries. Every attempt to establish generally 
the reformed principles in France has been 
crushed by the arm of despotism, or thwarted 
by the folly and shallowness of Protestant 
nobles, or nullified by the lukewarmness and 
moral feebleness of the middle classes. To 
the failure of France to grasp her opportu- 
23 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

nities in this respect, I believe we must at- 
tribute a decadence, moral and physical, 
which is becoming precipitate, and which 
bids fair to reduce her to a secondary rank 
among nations. 

A third cause of the universality and pop- 
ularity of French literature is the fitness of 
the French language. To it, also, as to 
French character and French history, we 
may apply the words "central" and "nor- 
mal." Its grammar is simple, — though not 
so simple as that of Italian or Spanish. Its 
vocabulary, in which the Latin originals are 
often clearly discernible, is easy to acquire 
and retain. Its orthography, while not pho- 
netic, is based on rigid principles, the same 
combination of letters being, with rare excep- 
tions, always pronounced alike. The firmness 
of its mechanism makes French a satisfactory 
language to foreigners. There is usually 
some one accepted way of expressing a given 
idea, and the idioms are so striking that, once 
thoroughly learned, they are never forgotten. 

It is only the degenerate writers of our own 
time, the so-called naturalists, who have gath- 
ered slang and thieves' jargon from the gut- 
ters of Paris and attempted to force them 
into good company, and the half-crazed de- 

24 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

cadent poets, who, in their ignoble scramble 
for notoriety, have invented meaningless 
phrases, — it is only through the deliberate 
efforts of these men that the French language 
has suffered any radical change in the last 
three hundred years. For the Romanticists 
of 1830, while, it is true, they enriched the 
vocabulary of poetry, did so mainly by reviv- 
ing certain ancient and half-forgotten but 
thoroughly French expressions, and admit- 
ting these and many terms of the prose or 
colloquial language into the " consecrated " 
list of words allowable in verse. As a rule 
they took no improper liberties with syntax, 
and did not cultivate either obscurity or slang. 
You can read Moliere more easily than you 
can read Paul Verlaine ; and the vocabulary of 
Zola is vastly larger and more unfamiliar than 
that of Saint-Simon and Voltaire. In short, 
until the last forty years there has been no 
very serious alteration in either the grammar 
or the vocabulary since the close of the six- 
teenth century; so that it has been eminently 
worth while to know French, because a com- 
mand of the language enabled one to read 
indiscriminately in the literature of the last 
three hundred years. It is interesting to 
observe that Old French, also, or the lan- 
25 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

guage as written from the middle of the 
eleventh to the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, preserved a character of remarkable 
uniformity for nearly five hundred years. 

The case of English has been quite differ- 
ent. A foreigner who can read Byron, Addi- 
son, and Washington Irving may not know the 
language well enough to understand Dickens 
or Carlyle, Shelley or Swinburne. Nor is 
the ability to read the simple love songs of 
Heine a guarantee that one can even make 
sense out of Schiller's noble ballads or 
Goethe's intricate and learned prose. 

It is not likely, however, that the modern in- 
novators will be able to corrupt permanently 
the French language, so clear, facile, and 
solidly constructed. It will probably continue 
to resist the encroachments of personal and 
local idiosyncrasy. It is still amply protected 
by the Academy, and by the traditions of 
the University and the National Theatre. 

We read in the writings of Wace, a Norman- 
English poet, that the French bard Taillefer 
went into the battle of Hastings singing of 
Charlemagne and Roland. What he sang 
was probably from the " Chanson de Roland/' 
composed most likely, in some form or other, 
before the middle of the eleventh century. 
26 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

And the " Chanson de Roland " was but one 
of many epic poems that grew up in France 
at the same time. Thus French literature is 
much more ancient than Italian literature 
and English literature. For it is fair to 
admit that English literature does not begin 
before the age of Chaucer. The Anglo- 
Saxon language, although modern English is 
bone of its bone, differs from modern English 
so widely that for practical purposes it is 
another tongue. We cannot read " Beowulf" 
or the " Saxon Chronicle " or Alfred without 
long and serious preparation, any more than 
we could read Dutch or Norwegian ; but this 
earliest French, the French of the " Chanson 
de Roland," wears the physiognomy of modern 
French. A French schoolboy, with intel- 
ligence and patience, can make out its mean- 
ing. We do not have to give it another 
name, as we do Anglo-Saxon. It is French. 
What is still more remarkable, from the 
earliest times of its history, eight hundred 
and fifty years ago, there has been no break 
in the seamless unity of French literature. 
Its characteristics have been the same from 
age to age. It has been a living organism, 
marked by the same excellences, the same 
defects, at all stages of its development. 
27 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Take it at any point you will, and you must 
find it interesting, full of life, vividly concern- 
ing itself with contemporary history. M. 
Brunetiere, in his fine essay entitled " Le 
Caractere essentiel de la Litterature fran- 
gaise," sums up the distinguishing quality of 
French literature in the word " social ; " 
meaning that it has, in the main, and more 
than other literatures, been produced with 
direct consideration of the tastes and needs 
of an immediate circle of readers. The ap- 
propriateness of M. Brunetiere's remark be- 
comes apparent when we consider what a 
large part of French literature consists of 
letters, memoirs, literary criticism, comedies, 
and dramas of private life. I would go a 
step farther than M. Brunetiere, and say that 
French literature is not only social, but 
appeals to the taste of a high and aristocratic 
society. It is marked by a noble distinction 
and courtly grace. It has the urbane quality 
which comes from city life. It has that 
lucidity, that definiteness and positiveness, 
which seem also to be the results of high- 
pressure existence in a metropolis. 

On the other hand, its deficiencies, as com- 
pared with English literature, seem to be a 
want of variety and freedom, a want of depth 
too, which three qualities, I think, — -variety, 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

freedom, and depth, — are the glory of Eng- 
lish literature. The remarkable thing is that 
it has maintained its character from first to 
last, so that one studying the poems of Charles 
d'Orleans and Villon in the fifteenth century 
finds them, in spirit and weight, curiously like 
the poems of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de 
Musset in our own day. This majestic fulness 
and this sustained identity of character are 
mainly due to the fact that the French have 
been, generally speaking, a very homogeneous 
and united people, — one in religion, in patri- 
otic ideals, and in social impulses. 

Moreover, it is not merely in recent times 
that French literature has maintained either 
the supremacy as compared with other mod- 
ern literatures, or at least a position in the 
first rank. It has been of such a sort that if 
you wish to know what the choice spirits of 
the world were thinking, at any given time, 
about the most important contemporary 
happenings, you will not be far astray if you 
read the French books of that period. The 
position of French literature has all along 
been much like the geographical situation of 
the country, in the centre of western Europe, 
or like the political standing of the nation, in 
the forefront of progress. To be imbued with 
29 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the French spirit has almost always meant to 
be near the heart of the age. And further- 
more, French literature has shared with 
Italian the distinction of being a large part 
of the channel through which Greek and 
Roman civilization and the traditions of 
ancient scholarship have flowed downward 
into the modern world. 

All this immense success has not been 
achieved without conscious effort. It has 
not all been due to impersonal causes. No- 
where has literary competition been so severe 
as in France. Nowhere has good work been 
so openly and dazzlingly rewarded. And 
nowhere, also, has failure been so quickly 
remarked and unhesitatingly derided. So 
that, in order to receive the stamp of authori- 
tative approval, literary work in France has 
had to come up to a high standard. French- 
men have the artistic conscience more highly 
developed than Englishmen or Germans, and 
are less likely to commend a badly written 
book or a poor painting. It is the careful- 
ness resulting from such sharp competition 
and such outspoken criticism that, more than 
anything else, has made French prose so 
clear, until now it is perhaps a more easily 
handled instrument of expression than Eng- 
3° 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

lish, and certainly more facile than German, 
and more precise than Italian. 

There are certain fields in which the pre- 
eminence of French literature is acknowl- 
edged. It holds the palm for memoirs and 
letters, for criticism, and for comedy. It is 
doubtful whether any other periods of history 
are so abundantly and entertainingly repre- 
sented in correspondence and diaries as the 
age of Louis XIV., the Regency, and the reign 
of Louis XV. Something comparable, indeed, 
has been done for the age of Queen Anne by 
English men of letters; but the feminine 
element here is not sufficiently prominent, 
and the scene, while not lacking in color, is 
too vaguely outlined. We have had one 
literary critic of the very first rank in Mat- 
thew Arnold, and many men of genius, like 
Coleridge and Lamb, who were great critics 
occasionally. But, in general, criticism has 
not been viewed seriously among us, as one 
of the grand, natural, necessary, and distinct 
divisions of literature. Even Lowell, with 
his eminent critical gift, was too often willing 
to lower the tone of an essay by admitting a 
pun or other irrelevancy. What we need as 
much perhaps as we need great critics of the 
first rank, and what can be more easily sup- 
3 1 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

plied, is a sound tradition, in which minor re- 
viewers may grow into usefulness ; a standard 
or standards which shall promote consistency, 
or at least define real issues. As compared 
with the chaos in America and England, 
criticism has, in France, reached the develop- 
ment of a fine art. What exalted names are 
Geoffroy, Villemain, Sainte-Beuve, Planche, 
Scherer, and Taine, to mention only the 
dead ! What an abundance, what a super- 
abundance, of schools and methods have we 
seen there even in our own day! 

Yet we too have had some critics, as we 
have had some letter-writers and diarists. But 
what must be said of English comedy as 
compared with French comedy? It is prac- 
tically non-existent, so far as present vital- 
ity is concerned, except for Shakespeare, 
Goldsmith, and Sheridan. Meanwhile, for 
every phase in the development of French 
society, during the last three centuries, there 
has been an accompanying comment in the 
form of comedy, which is capable of being 
made the most useful of all arts, from a moral 
and social point of view. The history of the 
French people for the last three hundred years 
may be traced in their comedies. And their 
comedies have helped to make history. " Le 
3* 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Mariage de Figaro " was worth more to the 
revolutionary cause than ten barricades or 
ten thousand bayonets. At every point, in 
this long period, we find French comedy still 
vital. The ancients are as popular as the 
moderns : " Tartufe," " Le Joueur," " Le Bar- 
bier de Seville, " see the footlights as often as 
" Le Fils de Giboyer " and " La Dame aux 
Camelias." Moreover, these lively creations 
appeal not only to the French but to us all. 

Perhaps it is that the French take more 
seriously to light things than we do, and 
make serious successes out of what with us 
are only light attempts ; whatever the cause, 
they excel us in comedy, criticism, and the 
epistolary art. But in spite of enormous 
effort and productiveness by the French in 
prose fiction, it may be said, though not, of 
course, without risk of contradiction, that the 
English novel, and also the Russian novel, 
present nobler and more varied and espe- 
cially truer types of men and women, and a 
vastly wider range of action. The almost 
exclusive preoccupation of French novelists 
has been and is the study of sexual relations, 
preferably immoral. The rest of life does 
not attract them. The spacious world of 
masculine strife for power seems to them 
3 33 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

small in comparison. The miniature world 
of home, vital and common to all, they have 
despised, in favor of a demi-monde which one 
cannot help suspecting them of having rather 
created than observed. Woman they have 
abundantly, though discouragingly, portrayed. 
But there is scarcely a man in French fiction, 
let alone a gentleman. Outdoor life, physi- 
cal danger and prowess, the joy of muscular 
effort and victory over things, the glory of 
self-control, the intoxication of free move- 
ment amid nature's terrible and fascinating 
sport, — all these are infinitely better and 
more copiously rendered by Gogol and Tol- 
stoi, by Fielding, Scott, and Stevenson, than 
by any Frenchman; for Dumas is frankly 
and happily unnatural, and the sentimental- 
ity of George Sand, Hugo, and Loti tinges 
with false color so many a page that the 
sense of reality is subtly impaired in all 
their novels. Nor, apart from the descrip- 
tion of sexual emotions, and apart from Bal- 
zac, has French literature a master of social 
synthesis to compare with Jane Austen, 
Thackeray, or Trollope, or with Turgenieff. 
And for novels of psychological analysis, 
with the same exceptions, there is no French 
diviner of the heart like Hawthorne and 
34 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

George Eliot; for Stendhal is dreary, and 
Bourget chooses for the most part to limit 
his fine powers to studying the wearisome 
question of illicit love. Balzac alone of 
French novelists is great in a world-wide 
sense, but the traveller through the city of 
his creation needs a cicerone to save time. 

In no field have the French so plumed 
themselves and made such determined effort, 
as in tragedy. Yet to most foreigners, even 
to many who are entirely sympathetic in their 
general attitude towards French literature, and 
to a considerable number of Frenchmen, their 
tragedy seems a far less imposing achieve- 
ment than the tragedy of England, or even 
of Germany. Perhaps the cause of the com- 
parative failure here lies in peculiar qualities 
of the language, — its want of natural rhythm, 
and the absence of a natural division in its 
diction between homely words and merely 
rhetorical words. Perhaps it lies deeper, — 
in the racial aversion to individuality. Parts 
of Corneille and Hugo, and all of Moliere's 
real tragedy, " Le Misanthrope," and Alfred 
de Musset's little proverbe, " On ne Badine 
pas avec rAmour," are tragic in a universal, 
and not merely French sense; but the regu- 
lar French tragedy, the tragedy of Racine 
35 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

especially, however perfect of its kind, is not 
world-wide in its appeal. Its beauties, recon- 
dite, and more closely connected with form 
than with sense, can rarely be appreciated by 
foreigners. It is a genre apart. Possibly it 
would be unfair to say that the genre as such 
is less noble than the romantic tragedy of 
England and Germany. 

In lyric and epic poetry it is the same causes 
which account for the same or even a more 
marked inferiority. Life purely social may 
produce charming vers de society exquisite 
trnaux et camees y — may produce even, as its 
fine flower, the fables of La Fontaine ; but only 
a land of intellectual and moral Protestantism, 
a land of warm personal religious convic- 
tion, a land where the individual feels himself 
standing alone, with the abyss of hell below 
him and the eternal heaven within his reach 
above, can give us the " Divine Comedy " or 
the " Ode to Duty." The French poems 
which can be compared, not with the poems 
of Dante, Goethe, and Wordsworth, or with 
those of Milton, Shelley, and Keats, but 
with the love-songs of Germany, the plain- 
tive monologues of Leopardi, the hundreds 
of minor English lyrics whose sweet un- 
dertone has been unbroken for six hun- 
36 



PLACE OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

dred years, are few indeed : three or four 
superb things by Villon in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, six or eight by Ronsard and Du Bellay 
in the sixteenth, nothing in the seventeenth, 
nothing in the eighteenth till we come to 
Andre de Chenier, who was half a Greek ! 
To deny that France is great in poetry is to 
deny that she is great in the better half of 
literature. Yet in poetry English holds the 
primacy, with Italy a noble second, and 
Germany third. In the nineteenth century, 
however, there has been a very extensive 
production of what the non-French world 
recognizes as poetry in a universal sense, 
due primarily to the lyrical genius of Hugo 
and to the romantic school. 

It is unnecessary to dwell further on the im- 
portance of French literature. Even though 
it were not so valuable, it would be attractive 
still, and men would read it for its immense 
resources of entertainment. And having once 
made ourselves acquainted with it, we shall 
realize its nobler qualities, shall acknowledge 
how sane and curative it is, what an antidote 
to morbidness of many sorts, what an enemy 
of melancholy and fanaticism, how it will pre- 
serve the mind from vain excesses and con- 
fusion and dull sloth. 

37 



THE 
GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 



39 



THE 
GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

When Voltaire was asked to write a com- 
mentary on Racine he responded : " There is 
no commentary needed in this case. All 
that I could do would be to put at the 
bottom of each page the words Beautiful, 
harmonious, admirable, pathetic, sublime. " 
This was said, no doubt, in a burst of gen- 
erous appreciation, and possibly Voltaire 
felt for the moment that it was futile to 
comment on what has no defects. "A per- 
fect being can have no parts " was a maxim 
of the schools. It is just as well to remem- 
ber, however, that no man understood better 
than Voltaire the usefulness of criticism, 
and that he did, at one time and another, 
have a great deal to say about Racine. 
Still, it stands to reason that in the case of 
the drama no amount of description and 
praise can equal the advantages of a com- 
fortable orchestra stall. This is true even 
of the extremely literary tragedies of Cor- 
neille and Racine. It is in the theatre and 

4i 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

under the spell of the artificial sense of real- 
ity prevailing there that they stir us most 
deeply, though even when read aloud or 
declaimed amid the merest suggestion of 
dramatic environment, they still move our 
hearts, and their characters seem like creat- 
ures of a nobler world than ours, breathing 
diviner speech. 

I confess, that to me Racine, at least, had 
never come home with power and charm, that 
although I appreciated somewhat of the ten- 
der and exquisite beauty of his language, 
I had never yielded to his dramatic force, 
until I heard his tragedy " Mithridate," at 
the Comedie Frangaise. I had been listen- 
ing, a few nights before, to Victor Hugo's 
" Hernani " at the same theatre. In " Her- 
nani " everything which stage artifice affords 
had been employed to captivate the sense. 
The scene had swarmed with glittering fig- 
ures in constant and striking action, fifty or 
sixty actors, great and small. We had had, 
in this modern romantic tragedy, a lady's 
apartments in a palace in Saragossa, a bal- 
cony scene, an old castle in the mountains 
of Aragon, with its grand hall covered with 
family portraits, then the tomb of Charle- 
magne in the crypt at Aix la Chapelle, and 
42 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

then a garden festival in Saragossa again. 
We had had moonlight rudely driven from 
high chamber casements by the glare of 
torches. Darkness and daylight had suc- 
ceeded each other with more than natural 
effectiveness. There had been the flash and 
sparkle of swords crossed in combat. There 
had been two lyric deaths. The whole 
storehouse of dramatic accessories had been 
laid under contribution for characters, cos- 
tumes, action, scenery, light and shade, and 
I had felt when all was over that at least no 
device had been left untried, in the presen- 
tation of this nineteenth century work, for 
producing a complete dramatic illusion. 

And then, as I have said, some good 
genius led me, a few nights later, to hear 
Racine's " Mithridate," at the same theatre. 
I went in no very eager mood, and partly 
from a sense of duty, prepared to pass a 
tedious evening. There are only seven char- 
acters in "Mithridate," and the supernu- 
meraries are not beautiful court ladies or 
charming pages, but only a squad of palace 
guards, who looked, on this occasion, like 
painted wooden soldiers. The scenery and 
stage setting represented a single plain room 
in an Oriental palace, with a view of the sea, 
43 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

and were the same throughout the play. A 
table, two chairs, and a stool were the only 
furniture, and their positions never varied. 
There was no action, beyond the necessary 
entrances, exits, and gestures, except the 
death of Mithridate, the Asiatic king, which, 
moreover, was performed with decorum and 
without undignified struggles. You could 
hardly imagine anything simpler, anything 
less dependent upon artificial aid, than this 
tragedy. The dialogue and the declamation 
stood almost alone. And yet I was com- 
pletely captivated, as I had not been by 
"Hernani." For the dialogue was in lan- 
guage so pure, so lofty, so noble, so refined, 
and especially so unfalteringly true to itself 
at all points, that I seemed to be hearing 
some exquisite music of the older school, 
something like Gluck's "Eurydice;" and 
these soft yet dignified measures were spoken 
in such silvery tones as one hears only on 
the French stage, or from the lips of Ellen 
Terry in English. The crowded house was 
hushed as it had not been for "Hernani." 
It was the words which held us breathless 
— the words and the sentiments, not the 
slender thread of incident, and certainly 
there was no unnecessary decoration to claim 

44 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

our attention. I for one, and I think many 
hundreds like me, did not awake from the 
spell until we found ourselves in the noisy 
square outside. 

Plainly no such effect can be produced by 
talking or writing about Racine and Cor- 
neille and analyzing their works. If you 
would feel the beauty of their plays, you 
must hear them recited on the stage or at 
least read aloud. In the case of Moliere 
also, though private reading of him is de- 
lightful, yet, of course, the French come- 
dians are his best interpreters. 

But what criticism may at least attempt, 
is to show how it came to pass in the ful- 
ness of time that these three men of the 
same generation rewarded the hopes of cen- 
turies, gathered to themselves the experi- 
ence of many writers who had failed, caught 
the ear and won the approval of their own 
age, and established themselves among the 
greatest of their race. A remarkably fa- 
vorable combination of political and social 
causes came into sudden activity near the 
middle of the seventeenth century in France, 
and operating with extraordinary success for 
a few years, left a very characteristic liter- 
ary product. Of this the drama is a small 
45 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

part quantitatively, but perhaps of more 
enduring interest than all the rest. 

Louis XIV. came to the throne in 1643, 
at the age of five, and began to rule in per- 
son in 1661. Roughly speaking, the two 
centuries between the accession of Louis XL 
in 1461, and the virtual beginning of Louis 
XlVth's reign, in 1661, may be considered 
to include the disintegration of the feudal 
system and the rise of absolutism. The 
process was more complete in France than 
in England. There has never really been a 
period of absolutism in England. During 
these two hundred years, from the accession 
of Louis XL in 1461, to the assumption of 
real power by Louis XIV. in 1661, a stand- 
ard of life, in manners, in art, and in gov- 
ernment, was being formed. This standard 
of life was brought to perfection and exer- 
cised full authority in the strong, success- 
ful years of Louis XIV., the twenty-two 
years from 1661 to 1683. 

When he began to rule personally, after 
the death of Mazarin, his prime minister 
and the virtual regent during his minority, 
the friends of peace and order hoped that he 
might prove a strong king, even though he 
should be a tyrant. The convulsions of re- 
46 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

ligious war had been stilled by the popularity 
and manly strength of his grandfather, Henry 
IV., and France had been held quiet for a 
few years by the great minister Sully and 
the great minister Richelieu. But she had 
relapsed into violent disorder again, in the 
civil war called the Fronde, and the accom- 
panying anarchy, between Richelieu's death, 
in 1642, and the memorable year 1661, when 
Louis XIV. took control of the government. 
So there was little opposition, and in most 
quarters great satisfaction, when the young 
king seized the occasion prepared for him by 
the failures of other men and the long re- 
sults of time, and settled himself securely 
in his throne as an absolute monarch. Firm- 
ness and activity marked the beginning of 
his powerful rule. He was a tyrant, but 
he established order. The stability of the 
throne became an unquestionable fact. The 
unity of the nation was assured by the king's 
supremacy. There was an immediate ces- 
sation of religious strife, and Church and 
Throne became each the other's guarantee. 
An administrative system was developed, 
minute in detail, but simple in its original 
source of authority, the king's will. Paris 
became more than ever the heart of France. 
47 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

A highly organized court life centred in the 
masterful monarch. Thus was constituted 
the governmental and social fabric which 
was the sensible manifestation of the idea 
of absolutism, an idea that had been tak- 
ing shape ever since the beginning of the 
Renaissance. 

To get an adequate conception of what 
this absolutism meant, it is not enough to 
remember that ministers, generals, and the 
civil and military officials under them, de- 
rived their authority directly from the sov- 
ereign. We must observe that all activity 
was supposed to await his bidding and look 
to him for reward. His honor was con- 
cerned in everything. Success of all kinds, 
no matter by whom achieved, was laid as a 
trophy at his feet. There was supposed to 
be real solidarity between the king and all 
the interests of his realm. In nothing is 
this better illustrated than in his relation to 
literature. Almost all the writers of his 
time were sooner or later admitted to court, 
and received personally his encouragement 
or blame. He did not hesitate to propose 
new subjects for their pens, and his sug- 
gestions were, of course, commands. He 
boldly criticised their plays and poems; and 
48 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

the chief sign that they really respected 
his opinion is the almost total absence of 
resentment, even in their private letters, so 
far as these have come down to us. The 
king won their attention and adhesion no 
less by the liberal pensions he granted to 
authors, than by his frank and, in the main, 
just and liberal criticism. Such breadth of 
view was natural to him, and was increased by 
the moral strengthening which came to him 
from the long exercise of his great office. 

There is probably no other point in mod- 
ern history which can be so well called the 
culminating point of a long period as the 
point in French history when Louis XIV. 
began to rule in person. There is probably 
no other time when a definite national ideal 
has taken shape so fully and expressed itself 
so broadly and along so many lines. The 
system of life under Louis XIV. was perfect 
of its kind. Granting the divine right of an 
absolute monarch at all, it must be admitted 
that perfection was attained during this reign 
in most of the forms of national greatness. 
In manners as in administration, in lan- 
guage as in dress and etiquette, in thought, 
finally, and in literature, the tone is the 
same, and it is the grand tone. 
4 49 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

The unfailing presence and abundance of 
the grand tone is what distinguishes the 
literature of that age. It is its grand tone 
which gives this literature a position of 
authority, and makes us say of it that it is 
classical. It was royal in purpose and use. 
It was produced, much of it, directly for the 
king's approval, and in accordance with what 
was supposed to be his taste. And it has 
the good qualities of royalty. It is marked 
by decorum, reserve, dignity. It has the 
aristocratic habit of reverent retrospection 
upon what is best in the past, with an easy 
disregard very often for what is pressing and 
clamorous in the present. It has polish, 
fineness, wit, just enough erudition, not too 
much vigor. Louis himself was not more 
elevated — or more insufficient. Within 
quite narrow limits, it comprises many beau- 
tiful and admirable achievements. Among 
the noblest and most enduring works in 
French philosophy are the " Pensees " and 
the " Lettres provinciales " of Pascal, the 
profoundest thinker of that age. The most 
inspiring eloquence that the French lan- 
guage boasts is in the addresses of Bossuet, 
the chief court preacher under Louis XIV. 
Among the first great and epoch-making 

5° 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

works in French literary criticism is the 
"Art poetique " of Boileau, who was dis- 
tinctly a poet of the court, and held officially 
the position of court historian. 

In these three departments of literature, 
in philosophy, oratory, and criticism, that 
is the classical age, and the works produced 
then are the classical or standard works. 
These works may be assailed. Men may 
deny their conclusions, and the spirit of our 
time may be wholly hostile to their spirit; 
but the form, the tone, the style, are beyond 
criticism, and the greatness of their influ- 
ence is unquestioned. They must always 
be reckoned with. And they are all stamped 
with the same character. They are what 
might have been expected from an era whose 
distinguishing quality was love of grandeur. 
They are strictly in the spirit of court so- 
ciety under an absolute monarch. 

But if this is the case with philosophy, 
oratory, and criticism, if they were thus 
conditioned by the peculiar social system of 
the time, may we not expect it to determine 
to a still larger extent the character of the 
drama? For of all forms of literature, the 
drama is most subject to contemporary in- 
fluence. Plays intended for the stage have 
5 1 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

always been written in direct response to a 
public demand, expressed or unexpressed. 
Goethe's " Faust " is perhaps the only drama 
of first-rate excellence which was not written 
with a primary view to being acted, rather 
than read. The two men in modern times who 
have succeeded in creating the best dramas 
for the closet as well as for the stage, 
Shakespeare and Moliere, probably wrote 
for some years with scarcely a thought of 
publishing their works. They were actors 
and managers of stock companies, and wrote 
to supply plays for immediate acting. And 
by serving well their age they served all 
time. Moliere was forced into printing, 
much against his will, to protect himself 
against "pirated" editions, as he tells us in 
the preface to "Les Precieuses ridicules." 

So we are not surprised to find that the 
drama of the seventeenth century in France 
is as full of the spirit of the age, as vibrant 
with the note of grandeur, as either its phi- 
losophy, or its oratory, or its criticism. It 
was produced for that age, not for ours. 
And it breathes the spirit of that age. The 
dramatist is by nature and calling a man of 
the world. Fashionable society, the people 
who enjoy the finest opportunities, may not 
52 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

always receive him, but he has within him, 
if he be a born dramatist, the faculty of com- 
prehending society. Shakespeare, we may 
surmise, would have been an ornament to 
the court of England. No high-bred gentle- 
man there would have excelled him in sweet 
and dignified bearing, in quick, fine percep- 
tion, in appropriate conduct. Corneille and 
Racine, and the strolling player Moliere, 
when they were put to the test of associa- 
tion with the court, proved themselves, as 
occasion demanded, the social peers of the 
Bourbons and the Montmorencis, and the 
equals, in dignity and grace, of any duke in 
the realm. This was not so much because 
they were poets, for there have been, here 
and there in the world, by some strange and 
unhappy chance, underbred poets. It was 
rather because they had the dramatist's eye 
for human conduct. Social distinctions, 
delicate shades of etiquette, and fine points 
of speech and action, which to many men 
are almost imperceptible, are enlarged as by 
a microscope, under the dramatist's faculty 
of observation. Whether or not, then, he be 
admitted to fellowship with the most charac- 
teristic and interesting people of his time, 
he is generally fit to be admitted; and in 
53 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

any case, even though it be but through 
half-open doors, he observes and judges. 
Corneille and Racine were allowed to enter 
freely into what was esteemed the best soci- 
ety. Shakespeare and Moliere only caught 
glimpses of it; but their quick eyes and 
comprehensive minds penetrated and under- 
stood its complexities at once. The drama, 
furthermore, is of necessity a representation 
of contemporary life. Shakespeare may put 
Caesar and Brutus and the Roman Senate on 
the stage, but they speak the thoughts and 
use the language of the English statesmen 
of his day. Bottom and Quince and Snug 
and Starveling, in the "Midsummer Night's 
Dream/' are as cockney a set of mechanics 
as ever ate English beef and drank English 
ale. 

Realizing this intimate connection be- 
tween the drama and contemporary life, 
Louis XIV. and his court more consciously 
fostered the player's art than any other. 
And of all the art-products of that age, its 
drama is the most typical, the most repre- 
sentative. The perfection of absolutism is 
nowhere better pictured for us than in the 
plays of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. 
The best side of that life is, of course, given 
54 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

more prominence than the worst, — a fortu- 
nate circumstance, for we thus possess what 
was best in an age distinguished for dignity 
and measure, for elevation and grandeur of 
tone; we thus possess that quintessence of 
noble qualities which constitutes the classi- 
cal French drama. And the classical drama 
is the noblest and most characteristic product 
of the French mind. 

The achievement is excellent, though slen- 
der. No one but a Frenchman will claim for 
the classical drama that it is a broad, full 
representation of human life, especially on 
the side of tragedy. Few critics, except 
French critics, will admit that it is poetry of 
the highest order. But its perfection within 
certain limits is what we must all feel. 
In the tragedies of Corneille and Racine it is 
not universal human nature we are called to 
contemplate, but a certain restricted caste of 
men and women, greatly idealized, their vir- 
tues magnified, their common or ugly feat- 
ures unrevealed. Whether the story be of 
Nero's court, as in Racine's "Britannicus," 
or of republican Rome, as in Corneille's 
" Horace," or of the early Christian martyrs, 
as in his "Polyeucte," or out of the Old 
Testament, as in Racine's "Athalie" and 
55 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

" Esther," the character and spirit, the phi- 
losophy of life, the etiquette and language, 
are inevitably those of the seventeenth cen- 
tury in France,, though often so much ideal- 
ized as to be scarcely recognizable. So that 
in these plays, which are nearly all histori- 
cal, or semi-historical, we have not really a 
picture-gallery representing life in Greece 
and Rome and Asia Minor, any more than 
the religious paintings of the old Italian and 
Dutch masters give us real Oriental faces, 
dress, and customs. Raphael's madonnas 
are Italian peasant women. Rembrandt's 
" Supper at Emaus " is a Dutch interior. 
As the old masters give us in their religious 
paintings the life of their own times, faith- 
fully reproduced, so the only historical ele- 
ment that is worth much in the seventeenth 
century French tragedy, in spite of Cor- 
neille's and Racine's strenuous efforts to 
describe antiquity, is the contemporary life 
displayed. 

Making allowance for the fact that it 
is court life chiefly, the life of princes and 
great lords and ladies, of bishops, states- 
men, and generals, and making allowance 
also for the fact that even this court life is 
idealized, it is still true that the portrait- 
56 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

gallery of French society under Louis XIV. 
is to be found in the pages of the dramatists. 
It is the only notable artistic reproduction 
of that society, except the miniatures of La 
Fontaine and La Bruyere. Letters and 
memoirs, especially the memoirs of Saint- 
Simon, the most important of all French 
memoirs, do give us a broad, but not an 
artistic, view. 

Furthermore, these plays possess, inde- 
pendently of their historical value, enough 
intrinsic merit to make them worth reading 
or hearing, now and at any time. This is, 
after all, the essential thing in a work of 
art, — this is the only essential thing, — ■ 
that it should yield a noble pleasure. About 
the nature and causes of this pleasure, it is 
in vain, or almost in vain, that men philoso- 
phize. We feel the pleasure, if we have the 
sense for art. And whatever art-work makes 
us feel it, that we know is excellent — ■ 

a Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

The classical French drama yields this noble 
pleasure in unceasing abundance. Therein 
lies its exceeding greatness. 

But we shall scarcely realize how great it 
57 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

is until we take a glance (and a glance will 
suffice) at the long, hard effort that had been 
made through previous ages to produce good 
drama in France, and the miserable failures 
of other men before Corneille, and consider 
how little there was in the traditions of the 
French stage to guide him. 

In the Middle Ages, a species of tragedy- 
was produced on religious holidays, before 
the doors, or even in the aisles, of churches. 
The actors were originally priests, and the 
subjects were stories from the Bible and 
from the lives of saints. The former were 
called mysteries, the latter miracles. Besides 
the churchmen, who at first held a monopoly 
of acting, associations of laymen, of which 
the latest and most celebrated was called 
the " Confrerie de la Passion, " received per- 
mission to produce religious plays. These 
mysteries and miracles were the beginnings 
of French tragedy. Two other voluntary 
associations, one of gay young gentlemen, 
called the "Enfants sans Souci," the other 
of law students, called the " Clercs de la 
Basoche," were permitted to produce farces, 
which were mainly satirical, and which often 
for that reason occasioned trouble. In these 
farces we see the rudiments of French com- 

58 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

edy. The " Clercs de la Basoche " had also 
the privilege of playing a fourth variety 
of dialogue, called "Morality/' which, like 
the modern melodrama, was neither strictly 
tragic nor wholly comic. In all these per- 
formances the sole object was to impress an 
audience. There is little evidence of an 
effort to produce what would be worth read- 
ing. The art is coarse and elementary. It 
is not surprising, therefore, that they fell 
into disrepute as soon as men with some 
knowledge of Aristophanes and Seneca be- 
gan to write. 

And this is what occurred about the 
middle of the sixteenth century. A group 
of seven persons, calling themselves the 
Pleiade, undertook to introduce in France 
plays of greater intricacy and higher finish 
than the old-fashioned kind. Their efforts 
in dramatic criticism and dramatic composi- 
tion were only a part of their general plan 
of reforming the French language and call- 
ing attention to the standards of literary 
excellence established by Greek and Roman 
authors. Ronsard in 1549 translated the 
" Plutus " of Aristophanes, and Jodelle, an- 
other member of the Pleiade, brought out a 
play, "Cleopatre," closely copied from Greek 
59 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

models. The first person outside of the 
Pleiade to follow their example was Gamier, 
who imitated Seneca, and wrote nine very 
stupid didactic tragedies. None of these 
pedantic works touched the public. To 
reach a popular audience, and at the same 
time to improve on the old Mysteries, 
Farces, and Moralities, was the achieve- 
ment of the last great predecessor of Cor- 
neille, Alexandre Hardy, who was born in 
1560 and died in 163 1. It is significant, 
that by the time of Hardy's death, Corneille 
was twenty-five years old, and had already, 
two years before, brought out a good com- 
edy, "Melite." Hardy wrote, it is said, 
more than six hundred plays. Some ac- 
counts put the number as high as twelve 
hundred. They were mostly close imita- 
tions from the Italian and Spanish. He 
wrote for a certain company of actors who 
were satisfied if a piece ran for a week. 

Such were the wretched antecedents of 
the great French drama of the seventeenth 
century, — in the beginning rude and almost 
barbarous, though original; in the sixteenth 
century and up to Corneille, nothing but 
pedantic attempts to copy Seneca's second- 
rate imitations of the Greek, or cheap, 
60 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

unscrupulous adaptations of Italian and 
Spanish playwrights, who themselves wrote 
with facility and power, rather than with 
true art. The only play from that dim, 
helpless confusion and chaos of struggle that, 
so far as I know, is ever acted now, or even 
read by any except the curious, is the farce 
" U Avocat Pathelin, " which has been adapted 
for the modern stage. 

The originality of Corneille can be appre- 
ciated only after some such backward turn- 
ing of the leaves as we have been making, 
into the dullest chapters of French litera- 
ture. He began to write much after the old 
manner, having been aroused, like his un- 
worthy predecessors, by admiration for the 
cleverness of Spanish plots. It is interest- 
ing to observe how his native force of char- 
acter led him, step by step, to abandon one 
old and stupid device after another, and to 
imitate better things and in a better way, 
until finally imitation became only an inci- 
dent, and originality the general rule with 
him. 

Pierre Corneille was born in the grand 

old town of Rouen, the city upon which, 

more than almost any other place in 

France, has been stamped the daring 

61 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

genius of the Middle Ages; for the 
Gothic architecture, which was the most 
characteristic art product of the Middle 
Ages, is more abundantly represented in 
Rouen than anywhere else. In 1606, when 
the poet was born, there was more of this 
noble architecture still standing in Rouen 
than we can see there to-day, and I do not 
think it fanciful to suppose that a suscep- 
tible boy, who was to be a poet, would be 
influenced for originality and sturdy power 
by the daily contemplation of the mighty 
walls of a Gothic cathedral, enormous, yet 
bold in structure, and free and varied in 
ornamental detail. 

He was the son of an advocate-general, 
and was to have been a lawyer himself. But 
he employed his youth in composing com- 
edies, which were not at all remarkable, 
or essentially different from those of Gar- 
nier and Hardy. Going to Paris, he there 
brought out, in 1629, a better comedy, 
"Melite," which met with considerable suc- 
cess. For the next six years he continued 
to write chiefly comedies, and it was not till 
1635 that he produced a good tragedy, "Me- 
dee." But it was the next year, 1636, that 
the young poet suddenly thrust his head 
62 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

above the level of mediocrity. In that year 
he brought out the "Cid," a tragedy. It 
was a close imitation, in plot and details of 
action, of a Spanish play by De Castro, and, 
it may reasonably be asked, wherein con- 
sists its originality ? I should say that the 
originality of the "Cid," and what made it 
mark an epoch, was the fact that in it, for 
the first time in French literature, a really 
strong intelligence, governed by a high 
moral character, poured itself forth, sin- 
cerely and enthusiastically in a dramatic 
theme. 

Suddenly, on the appearance of that 
play, there was revealed to France the 
proud, pure, chivalrous heart of Corneille, 
and she recognized in him, though not 
quite immediately, her first great dramatic 
poet. He was, and in this play first 
showed himself to be, an example of one 
of the most admirable ideals of that age, 
— its ideal of elevated, dignified, eloquent 
conduct in love and danger. Corneille found 
in his own heart the central character of the 
"Cid," Don Rodrigue. Three years later, 
when he was only thirty-three years old, he 
produced "Horace," a tragedy founded on 
a familiar anecdote in Roman history, and 

63 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

"Cinna," also of Roman origin. The next 
year he produced " Polyeucte," the fourth 
and last of his masterpieces ; for though he 
lived till 1684, and wrote voluminously, he 
never again attained the sincerity, the youth- 
ful idealism, the fire and fervor, the sublim- 
ity, of these early works. There are many 
critics who consider "Polyeucte" the best 
of the four. But readers and playgoers gen- 
erally prefer the "Cid," and, I think, with 
reason. " Polyeucte " is based upon the life 
of an early Christian martyr, and the two 
ideals, of Christian sacrifice and of chivalric 
honor, which are commingled in it are in- 
capable of perfect fusion, for the basis of 
the former is humility, and of the latter 
pride. The " Cid " is an eloquent expres- 
sion of the old chivalric idea of honor, un- 
mixed with any other view of life, either 
Christian or selfish or utilitarian. It seems 
to have come forth in a single jet, as the 
French say, and is the most unified and 
characteristic of Corneille's tragedies. As 
the poet grew more critical of his own writ- 
ing, and more conscious of his public, he 
departed farther from that high ground of 
generous emotion where his youthful heart 
poured forth the "Cid." 
64 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

But if Corneille in his tragedies portrayed 
and idealized the social order in its heroic 
aspect; if he set forth royalty as an unas- 
sailable and absolute unit, and a high noble 
caste as deriving from royalty all its rights 
and all its admirable qualities; if in his sin- 
cere and stately works he blew the trumpet 
of praise to usher in the young king who was 
to be in his own person the epitome of 
national greatness and national complete- 
ness, — if Corneille did do all this, there 
was still left even in France a large mass 
of humanity, which, in spite of the intense 
centralization of the nation, could by no 
means be said to come within the social 
order as he conceived it. His plays contain 
no criticism of common life, — no sympathy, 
and not even a helpful laugh, for ordinary 
men and women. The people are not rep- 
resented. The business and professional 
classes could not possibly see themselves in 
the grandiose characters of Corneille, — in 
the Horatii and Don Rodrigue, men of 
antique fibre and mighty-sounding antique 
speech. It remained for some one else 
than Corneille, therefore, to picture the life 
of France, not in general outline, as a great 
unified system, but in detail; not in its 
5 65 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

noblest aspects only, but also where it was 
excessive or ridiculous, or even merely gay 
and natural. It remained for some one to 
represent artistically, not the ideal summit 
of life, narrow and sheer and perhaps unat- 
tainable, to which the seventeenth century 
aspired, but things as they really were. 

In the years when Corneille, having ac- 
complished his reform, having completed 
his picture of the grand side of life, hav- 
ing created French tragedy, was seen to 
be incapable of rivalling himself, — in the 
early years of Corneille's long decline, the 
king of comedy was travelling about the 
country as a strolling actor. In comedy 
alone could the details of life which lay 
beneath the pompous show of absolutism be 
given artistic representation, — in comedy 
alone, and in lyric poetry, for the novel was 
not yet developed into an exponent of con- 
temporary manners and morals. And al- 
though in poetry — in the fables of La 
Fontaine — the humble details of life were 
recognized and most deftly employed, the 
fables of La Fontaine are almost the only 
non-dramatic poems which that age produced 
in France, and even these little masterpieces 
are but miniatures. It required the broad, 
66 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

hearty laugh of Moliere, -his piercing eye, 
his resistless charm, his wide and deep ex- 
perience of the ways and works of men, it 
required comedy, in a word, — for Moliere is 
comedy in person, — to discover and analyze 
and artistically reconstruct the real France. 

Moliere's rise to public view was made 
possible by the direct exercise of royal favor, 
and is an illustration of what good may 
sometimes come of benevolent absolutism. 
In a republic, or under a government by 
parliament, he might have been borne down 
by popular conservatism or the jealousy of 
the great. But in personal alliance with an 
enlightened despot he was enabled to be 
fairly independent of the people, — for short 
periods only, of course, for the comedian 
after all must draw his very life from the 
people, — and to smile at the rage of dukes 
and marquises. We are so accustomed to 
think of liberty as the mother of the arts, 
that it is hard for us to realize how much 
good has often come to literature from the 
patronage of tyrants, — a selfish patronage, 
perhaps, but often effective. 

There is no name in French literature at 
all comparable with that of Moliere. He 
is, in fact, the one world-genius which the 
67 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

French race has produced. La Fontaine, I 
think it is fair to say, comes second; but to 
enjoy him one must needs be versed, not 
only in the French language, but in the 
French heart. His very delicacy of flavor 
is a bar to perfect comprehension, and there- 
fore to perfect enjoyment by foreigners. 
And even if an apt and sympathetic student 
of La Fontaine should translate him well, 
even if all the world could appreciate him 
as do the best French minds, he would still 
come short of being a universal poet, like 
Chaucer and Schiller, because he lacks their 
" high seriousness/' and because French verse 
is not so good a medium for poetic expres- 
sion as English or German verse, There is 
no name in the older French literature ex- 
cept La Fontaine's which for world-wide 
influence can be for a moment considered to 
rival Moli£re's. Ar.J there has been no 
creator of comedy except Shakespeare worthy 
to sit beside Moliere with the Athenians, 
Aristophanes and Menander, and the Rom- 
ans, Plautus and Terence. 

Such a genius is personal, and might be 

supposed to enter the world as meteors flash 

through our earth's enveloping atmosphere, 

unannounced, and independent of contempo- 

68 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

rary needs. It is true that under any cir- 
cumstances, in any country, and at any time, 
Moliere would probably have observed and 
penetrated to the roots of human conduct, 
and would have been an excellent imitator. 
But the facts in his life tell a much less 
simple story; and they are very interesting. 
They show how the soil and air of a highly 
organized society under an absolute monarch 
were precisely what this talented comedian 
required to develop into a powerful genius. 
Let us look at these facts. The dates them- 
selves are eloquent. Moliere was born in 
Paris in 1622, and went on the stage in 
1646, when twenty-four years old. He 
organized a company, with which he trav- 
elled for twelve years among the country 
towns and minor cities of France. To act 
in the provinces alone was no great career in 
those days, any more than it is now. Nor 
was it at all remarkable for a manager to 
write comedies and farces for his troupe. 
So that although by the end of these twelve 
years Moliere had composed no small num- 
ber of pieces and performed in them in many 
places, he had done nothing notable, and was 
considered to have achieved only an ordi- 
nary, honorable success when he found him- 

69 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

self rich and confident and popular enough 
to come to Paris in 1658 and set up a the- 
atre. His first hall was in the Petit-Bourbon 
Palace, near the Louvre, but he presently 
removed to the Palais Royal. 

The breath of the capital at once freed his 
hitherto confined activities. The old order 
was changing. Men were already wearying 
of the fashions and manners that had pre- 
vailed under Richelieu and Mazarin, and 
wishing the young king would assert him- 
self. Moliere's first great comedy, which 
was also the first great dramatic study of 
French manners ever written, "Les Preci- 
euses ridicules," was produced in 1659, its 
author taking the leading r61e, that of Mas- 
carille. Consciously, and as if aware that 
he was allying himself with the new spirit 
of the times, as represented in the king, 
Moliere ridiculed in this play the affecta- 
tion, the inflated language, the exaggerated 
manners, the aesthetic pedantry, of the age. 
Never after Louis XIV. began to rule in 
person would it be possible for courtiers to 
indulge in such nonsense. The etiquette of 
his court was to be complicated and severe, 
and in many ways artificial, but it was not 
to be absurd. Moliere seems to have di- 

70 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

vined this, and " Les Precieuses ridicules " 
was a warning to blue-stockings and dandies 
that they must learn to speak French, and 
no longer call a mirror the counsellor of 
the graces, or a chair the commodity of 
conversation. 

"Les Precieuses ridicules " was a criti- 
cism of contemporary life, and could never 
have been created outside of the capital, 
or far from the palace of that king who 
was known to be the personification of good 
sense and good taste. It was followed by 
other comedies, not all of them so mani- 
festly full of tendency. In fact, some are 
farces, like " Sganarelle," not differing es- 
sentially from those with which Moliere had 
been wont to amuse provincial audiences. 
But in 1665 he produced a long and remark- 
able comedy of quite another sort, called 
"Don Juan" or the "Festin de Pierre. ,, 
The daredevil character of the principal per- 
sonage brought down on Moliere the censure 
of the unco guid. He was attacked for im- 
piety, and it looked at one moment as if the 
police would have to withdraw his privilege 
of managing a theatre. It was at this junc- 
ture, 't is worth our while to notice, that the 
king silenced calumny and encouraged the 

7i 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

brave comedian by pensioning both him and 
his troupe. "Don Juan" is not a comedy 
of contemporary manners, but a romantic 
comedy, something very rare in French 
literature. It was the only one Moliere 
wrote, and he was not even imitated in 
this type of writing, down to Alfred de 
Musset Shakespeare is the magician who 
has shown us what romantic comedy may 
be by the "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
by "As You Like It," by "A Winter's 
Tale." Those who love Moliere and are 
glad to do homage to his personal genius 
prize this play as exhibiting an other- 
wise only latent power, the power of warm 
romantic imagination. 

Next year came the most subtle, the most 
profound, the most poetical of all French 
dramas, whether of tragedies or comedies. 
It is usually called a comedy, but if the sad- 
ness of deceived love and the seriousness of 
a noble heart have in them aught of tragic 
grandeur, then the "Misanthrope" of Moli- 
ere is as much a tragedy as " King Lear " or 
" Hamlet." It is a touching protest against 
the insincerity of ordinary social relations, 
against trifling in love, against cynicism 
and conventional lying. The hero is a 

72 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

plain-spoken, just man, who looks upon the 
world with childlike good faith, and tells 
the truth unfalteringly. His disenchant- 
ment, his amazement at the falseness of 
men, and especially of women, and his true- 
hearted constancy, nevertheless, to what he 
believes is right, make him a figure as pa- 
thetic as he is noble. The play is thought 
to be autobiographical, in so far at least as 
it relates an unhappy love affair. We know 
that Moliere's marriage was most unfortu- 
nate, and his wife unworthy of him. 

The " Misanthrope " was followed by 
"Tartufe," a daring criticism of religious 
hypocrisy; and once more the royal favor 
had to be exerted to protect Moliere from 
the fury of Jesuits and fools. Among his 
later pieces, "L'Avare" is a thorough 
study of the character of the miser, taken 
as a type; " Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," 
a farcical satire on men of the middle 
class who ape the manners of the nobility; 
"Les Femmes savantes," a protest against 
the new education of women; "Le Malade 
imaginaire," a clever hit at doctors. 

In all Moliere's works written after his 
establishment in Paris we find the same 
zeal for the more natural and dignified man- 
73 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

ners favored by Louis XIV., as opposed to 
the exaggerated fashions of an earlier time. 
The atmosphere of most of his plays written 
after 1658 is that of the court. He had but 
to transfer to his stage the marquises and 
countesses whom he found acting their parts 
in the Louvre, and behold, he gave us com- 
edy! The dialogue in the more important 
of his plays is courtly. We have here not 
simply the ridiculous side of court life, but 
much that is serious, much that is beautiful. 
And his work is all interesting and all truly 
representative. But throughout, there is 
also a revelation of Moliere's personality. 
It is immensely attractive. We learn, first 
of all, his fondness for whatever is natural. 
He loves good, simple people. He loves 
good, simple poetry. He has a fine scorn of 
pretence and sham. A hundred passages 
could be quoted to illustrate his hatred of 
hypocrisy. He here and there alludes grace- 
fully to the favor the king had shown him, 
and pays homage to the king's successes; 
but he never stoops to flattery, and it is like 
one potentate saluting another. The pathos 
of his end is none the less because mingled 
with irony. Although sick unto death, he 
went manfully on the stage lest the poor 

74 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

men and women in his employment should 
suffer for want of work if he closed his 
theatre, and it was while acting the "Malade 
imaginaire," a satire on his enemies the 
doctors, that he suffered a mortal seizure, 
in 1673. No gayer, gentler, kinder man 
ever graced the stage. No eye was ever so 
sharp to discover human weakness, no heart 
more quick to excuse it. Wherever men 
read or listen to Moliere, there laughter is, 
— the freest, healthiest, most irrepressible 
laughter, — but there rises in us a sad won- 
der, too, at the foibles of men and women ; 
and the mind is mellowed by reflecting on 
human sorrow wreathed in smiles, and hu- 
man goodness inextricably mingled with 
wickedness and folly. 

'Twas in 1673, the year of Moliere's 
death, that Racine produced " Mithridate," 
one of his first great tragedies. He had 
been at court for some years, having come 
to public notice and royal favor by an ode 
on the occasion of the king's wedding. But 
the grand Corneille was still before the 
world, and Racine, young and gentle, devel- 
oped slowly. As the king's reign reached 
the climax of its greatness, however, in the 
notable decade of political and social power 
75 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

between 1673 and 1683, Racine grew equal 
to the times, and wrote his "Iphigenie" and 
his "Phedre." Offended by some adverse 
criticism of the latter, and affected also by 
religious scruples against working for the 
stage, he suddenly withdrew from the praises 
of the world, and devoted himself to his 
family, to theological and poetical studies, 
and to his duties as court historian. When 
he issued from retirement, twelve years 
later, it was in response to a demand of 
Madame de Maintenon that he should write 
a tragedy for the school for young ladies at 
Saint Cyr which was under her patronage. 
He chose the story of Esther, from the Old 
Testament, and when the wonderful success 
of his attempt drew from him another, two 
years later, he again selected a biblical 
theme, and wrote "Athalie." Racine is a 
better illustration than either Corneille or 
Moliere of what the spirit of the times 
could do. His personality was not so strong 
as theirs, and he was young and susceptible 
in that decade when the spirit of absolutism 
in a highly organized society had more com- 
pletely expressed itself. And by that time 
Moliere was dead, and Corneille too old to 
be inspired by the new ideals. Racine's 

76 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

tragedies are consequently the most typical 
glories of the classical French drama. For 
regularity and finish, for scrupulous avoid- 
ance of whatever savors of common life and 
common speech, they are unmatched even by 
Corneille. Their versification is perhaps the 
smoothest and most musical in all French 
literature. They excel as much in what they 
are not as in what they are. To the French 
mind, ever striving after distinctness and 
intellectual completeness within the bounds 
of common sense, and easily shocked by rude 
emphasis or unbalanced power, Racine is 
synonymous with perfection. 

Voltaire, the most assiduous and admiring 
student of Racine, respected his achieve- 
ments more, probably, than those of any 
other man who ever lived. We can excuse 
the national bias when it leads even Vol- 
taire to worship, though it is hard to realize 
that such a thorough scholar of English as 
Voltaire was, and such a lover of the drama, 
could have called Shakespeare "a drunken 
savage, without the smallest spark of good 
taste, and without the least acquaintance 
with the rules." Listen to Racine at his 
best, and you may fancy you see a stately 
company of noble lords and ladies winding 
17 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

through the mazes of an ancient minuet, 
with delicate precision and admired re- 
straint. But we who have been used to 
English speech and English poetry are com- 
pelled to feel that this is very artificial and 
constrained, when our ears catch sound of 
the mighty rushing wind which is the voice 
of Shakespeare. 

But Shakespeare in connection with 
French literature is all modern. He is a 
romantic, and romanticism in France is of 
the nineteenth century. And this reminds 
us that in speaking of Racine's latest plays, 
written at the command of the royal mis- 
tress-wife, we have crossed the divide in 
French history. Classicism and unchal- 
lenged absolutism we have seen ascending 
the vast slope together, to a summit of joint 
perfection, reached when Louis XIV. was in 
his prime. By 1683 the classical French 
drama was a thing accomplished. Moliere 
was dead, Corneille about to die, and Ra- 
cine had done his life-work, all but his last 
two pieces. Human presumption and in- 
genuity, the power and pride of a victorious 
monarch, had held together and brought to 
this high pass the most completely organ- 
ized society in the world. Henceforth this 

78 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

company was doomed to go downhill, to 
separate at the partings of the ways, and to 
dissolve finally in helpless disunion. The 
song they chanted, the music of their three 
great artists, was to endure. It is still the 
noblest thing that remains of all that age of 
grandeur. 

If we would behold that splendid and con- 
spicuous company as it stands, united and 
triumphant, on the summit of attainment 
in 1683, it must be with a brief and final 
glance. For the descent into ruin is sharp. 
One false step after another scatters and 
thins the bewildered band. The disintegra- 
tion of French society began with the death 
of the queen in 1683, which removed the 
greatest obstacle to the legitimation of the 
bastard princes. In 1684 the king secretly 
married Madame de Maintenon, thus put- 
ting himself under the control of a bigoted 
woman whose conscience was directed by 
Jesuit confessors. Their hand is seen the 
next year in the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, by which half a million Protestants 
were driven from France to rival countries, 
and in the twenty years of persecution for 
religion, which began immediately in the 
South. These atrocities helped to consoli- 
79 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

date Europe against the king who had now 
become a dangerous despot; and the coali- 
tion of hostile powers was formed in 1686. 
After some years of costly victories, even the 
French arms began to fail, and France suf- 
fered terrible defeats, at Blenheim in 1704, 
at Ramillies in 1706, at Malplaquet in 1709. 
In 171 1 the hand of God fell heavily upon 
the king's lineage, so that it seemed as if, 
in Dante's words, a just judgment, novel, 
and visible to all men, fell from the stars 
upon his blood; for in that year died his 
only legitimate son, and next year died that 
son's son, the Duke of Burgundy, and his 
young and lovely wife, A twelvemonth 
later he lost Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, 
and yet the obstinate old king persisted in 
religious persecution, breaking up the best 
schools in France because they were taught 
by the Port Royal reformers, and forcing 
his clergy to sign the bull Unigenitus, which 
condemned the Jansenists. When he died, 
in 1715, multitudes made holiday, and mock- 
ery arose along the line of his funeral jour- 
ney. The Revolution had begun. It is still 
going on, though more than two centuries 
have elapsed since its beginning. 

What is the French Revolution? It is, 
80 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

I think, first of all a conviction that social 
perfection has never been attained, even in 
the great reign of Louis XIV. And it is, 
secondly, a confidence that human nature is 
able, by the Reason, to work out a state of 
social perfection, some day and somehow, — 
the idea of a conscious, rational social evolu- 
tion. We have not yet seen the whole 
course of the French Revolution completed. 
There are still unsatisfied theorists at work 
on the banks of the Seine, restlessly urging 
untried issues. But so far as the Revolution 
has proceeded, we may see in it two lines 
of effort,— the line of protest against the 
past and the line of hopeful search into the 
future, the line of analysis and the line of 
synthesis, the line of destruction and the 
line of reconstruction. Along the former 
line we see the labors of Voltaire; along the 
latter are the remains of Rousseau's ideal 
fabrics. Along the one line we have the 
barricades and the guillotine, the revolts of 
1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871; along the other 
we have the successive constitutions under 
which France has existed during the last 
eleven decades. 

And not- alone in politics was the age of 
Louis XIV. followed by an age of revolu- 
6 81 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

tion. In philosophy and in art the same 
changes have occurred. The modern litera- 
ture of France is not classical, but roman- 
tic. It is a literature of experiment, indeed 
often of protest. There is perpetual war 
among the various schools of poetry and fic- 
tion. Great reputations decline as rapidly 
as they are made. Modern French works 
are called masterpieces for a day, and then 
forgotten. Fortunate are we, then, to have 
still something upon which the seal of uni- 
versal approval has been set, something for- 
ever fair and serenely secure, something 
classical, in a word. What matters it to us 
that the old society has crumbled, in the 
midst of which this beautiful thing, the 
classical French drama, was produced ? That 
social system was corrupt. The great king 
ruled, not by divine right, as he supposed, 
but by craft and oppression. King and 
social system deserved their downfall, but 
the drama they helped to form is a thing of 
beauty and shall endure. We are told that 
Samson, after he had killed a lion in the 
vineyards of Timnath, going back that way, 
"turned aside to see the carcass of the lion; 
and, behold, there was a swarm of bees, and 
honey, in the carcass of the lion. And he 
82 



GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH DRAMA 

took thereof in his hands, and went on, eat- 
ing, and came to his father and mother, and 
they did eat ; but he told not them that he 
had taken the honey out of the carcass of 
the lion." 



*3 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 
SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 



85 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 
SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

THE French Revolution may properly be said 
to have begun in the closing years of the 
seventeenth century. It was then that the 
system of absolutism attained completion, 
then also that its limitations of barrenness 
and hard brutality were disclosed. Out- 
raged nature called aloud for revenge. 
Frenchmen asked themselves whether they 
were receiving an adequate return for their 
expenditure of blood and treasure, and for 
the surrender to the Crown of every sort of- 
temporal advantage, and to the Church of all 
spiritual independence. For a long time at 
first criticism was uttered with bated breath, 
during the last thirty years of Louis XlVth's 
life. But under the Regency clearer voices 
arose and boldly compared France with hap- 
pier lands enjoying rational laws. The im- 
port of these protests was unsuspected by 
the government and unrealized even by their 
authors, who nearly all belonged, in fact, to 
the privileged classes. Men were hardly 

87 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

conscious of a changed relation. But after 
the lapse of two hundred years it is possible 
for us to discern a distinct alteration of feel- 
ing, dating from about 1685. It is discovera- 
ble first in private letters and secret memoirs, 
where we remark an unwonted freedom of 
speech concerning the corruption of the 
court, a ridicule of the old king which would 
have shocked the previous generation, and a 
reluctant presentiment of national defeat at 
the hands of England and her allies. Saint- 
Simon particularly made a tremendous out- 
cry against the legitimation of the bastard 
princes, a measure which he rightly con- 
sidered fatal to the position of the old feudal 
nobility. 

But except for these faint or incoherent 
protests, which may, it is true, be regarded 
as the beginnings of the Revolutionary pro- 
paganda, there could be nothing more uni- 
fied, more characteristic and consistent, than 
French literature in the reign of Louis XIV. 
It is a well-nigh perfect harmony. The in- 
struments, you will say, are of few kinds, as 
in an orchestra of Haydn's day. The music 
is often shallow. But it is certainly refined 
and well concerted, except for this one dis- 
cordant note. During the seventy-two years 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

of Louis XlVth's reign, from 1643 to 1715, 
there were developed a type and a body of 
literature so peculiarly French and so excel- 
lent that this, together with the succeeding 
time of imitation, has by common consent 
been called the classical period. 

The influence of the king is manifest in all 
this work, and withal a national spirit pervades 
it. The monarchy gave to the world nothing 
else half so fine, or that has endured half so 
long, as the classical French literature. It 
was fostered by royal patronage and possesses 
royal worth. It has the great virtue of dis- 
tinction, a virtue not foreign to courts, even 
in their decay. It is dignified and simple. 
It is clear and graceful. For public life 
under Louis XIV., despite its inward rotten- 
ness, and in spite also of its brutal abuse 
of force, was in the main characterized by 
respect for whatsoever was of good report. 
Literature was deliberately and intelligently 
cultivated as one of the most creditable 
ornaments of the throne. If the result was 
artificial, it was thoroughly artistic; that is, 
it testified to great industry guided by good 
taste. It is indeed worthy of the throne, 
representing nobly the throne's stability, 
magnificence, and haughty elevation. And 
89 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

it is almost as direct a product of the mon- 
arch's power as were the army, or the for- 
eign policy, or the court etiquette. 

This may be said without prejudice to the 
independent merit of the works of Corneille 
and Pascal, of Moliere and La Fontaine, of 
Racine and La Bruyere, of Fenelon and Bos- 
suet. If these great men were caught in the 
resistless currents of destiny and made to re- 
volve around one central fact, and that the 
terrible and iniquitous fact of absolutism in 
Church and State, we should not complain, 
but rather rejoice that their native wit and 
manliness preserved them from indecent sub- 
jection. It is remarkable what individuality 
they display, though all their writings are 
stamped with the seal of royal authority. 
Their work is limited ; but it is select. It is 
not always broadly human; but it has the 
good qualities of an aristocracy, — it is 
marked by dignity, reserve, wit, fineness, 
form. 

The first voices of protest were raised 
against political corruption only. The rav- 
ages of unnecessary warfare and of boundless 
extravagance could not but be immediately 
felt, though the loss of religious and social 
integrity might be for a while unrealized. 
90 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

But even this suspension of sentence was 
exhausted before the old king's death. The 
worst condemnation of his despotic system 
is in the fact that when the leading men 
died who had made his reign illustrious, 
none were left to fill their places. Confin- 
ing our attention to literature, we see that 
only two of the great writers of his era, 
Massillon and Saint-Simon, survived the 
year 171 5; so short-lived and so barren 
of offspring was the boasted culture of the 
golden age. However vigorous and beau- 
tiful, it was a parasitic growth. It devel- 
oped, not from popular enlightenment nor 
the discipline of the national conscience, but 
from the narrow, the exclusive, the unnatu- 
ral conditions of absolutism. 

When Louis XIV., through darkening years 
of political and domestic loss, reached the limit 
where flattery can no longer deceive and pat- 
ronage no longer influence, if he could have 
looked about him with discerning eyes he 
must have seen that he stood alone. The 
poets and philosophers who gave charm and 
depth to life in the early years of his reign 
were silent. The serene, consoling voices 
of his great prelates, promising heavenly 
approval, were now but hollow echoes, mock- 
9 1 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

ing at reality. The generals and financiers, 
the ministers of state, the architects, the 
masters of ceremonies, who had shared his 
glory and helped him ruin France, had 
nearly all been consigned to more or less 
dishonored graves. Their successors who 
surrounded him were a degenerate race. 
The fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the 
children's teeth were set on edge. No re- 
vival of manhood could be expected from 
them. And if with the clairvoyance of the 
dying his gaze penetrated the future, he 
must have seen that not only was the great 
chapter in French literature finished and the 
peculiar culture of his age outworn, but that 
the new time would be hostile to the old. 
His injustice to the people was to be atoned 
for by a political revolution, which had be- 
gun already. The attacks he had made 
on religious and civil freedom were to de- 
prive France, for many generations, of moral 
strength and spiritual vigor. He left to his 
country a heritage of isolation, poverty, and 
false political theories. England had founded 
her colonial empire and her commerical su- 
premacy on the ruins of his costly schemes 
of conquest. The barbarities he had author- 
ized or permitted against the Rhine prov- 
92 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

inces were to make Germany the hereditary 
foe of France. Holland and Spain, the ex- 
tremes of the continental system, he had 
made equally his foes, when one or the 
other might have been his ally. 

The one imperishable and precious treas- 
ure of his reign, which should be the nation's 
pride forevermore, and of which no revolu- 
tion, no social decay, no foreign enemy 
could diminish the value, was its literature. 
The vein apparently was worked out ; but 
a great accumulation was already made, 
solid, pure, unchangeable. To us both facts 
are important: that the literature of the age 
of Louis XIV. is truly great and truly typi- 
cal of what was best in seventeenth-century 
France, and that its production terminated 
with astonishing sharpness. 

It is singular that the most notable sur- 
vivor, and except Massillon the only great 
writer to survive, — it is singular that the 
solitary figure which stands firmly outlined 
against the lowering sky amid all this 
wreckage, is Saint-Simon, because he is not 
properly of Louis XlVth's time at all. He 
voyaged through its later part and recorded 
the truth concerning it as no one else dared 
do. But the reason is that he saw with the 
93 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

eyes of one who was not of that world. He 
was the last defender of feudalism, which 
was to him an ideal system. He was at- 
tached to it by principle, undoubtedly, but 
also by self-interest. , As a great hereditary 
nobleman, a duke and peer, he saw himself 
robbed of honor and influence by the as- 
sumptions of the monarchy. He saw the 
Crown strengthening itself by encroaching 
on the aristocracy, and the latter losing its 
old political ambition for the sake of the 
wealth connected with court offices and 
favors. He realized that Louis XIV. was 
completing the work begun by Louis XL, 
and reducing the old active aristocracy to 
a mere disfranchised, wealthy class, entirely 
dependent upon royal favor and liable to 
be reduced in the future to the level of the 
populace. 

These considerations, combined with per- 
sonal resentment of ill-treatment, made Saint- 
Simon the unacknowledged defender of his 
order, which was so lost to self-respect that 
it ridiculed him for his pains. He remained 
tenacious of his class privileges and rever- 
enced his own name. But it was a losing 
fight. He was slow to learn that the nobil- 
ity was no longer a wheel in the machine of 
94 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

government. He looked back with regret to 
the days of Saint Louis, when the barons of 
France were but little lower than the king. 
Or perhaps he contemplated with envy the 
growth of party government in England, 
where an aristocracy of great political vital- 
ity was steadily limiting the royal power 
by a constitution more inviolable than the 
throne itself. But it was vain to hope for 
a revival or transformation of feudalism now, 
in France. 

So we may say that in one sense Saint- 
Simon was a representative of an older age 
than the age of Louis XIV. His character, 
as well as his political aspirations, allied him 
to the past. He was of sterner stuff than 
his contemporaries. Although a rigid Catho- 
lic, he was something of a Puritan, and in that 
respect more like the writers of his youth 
than those of his later age. He was as rude 
and bluff, considering his circumstances, as 
any old partisan of the Wars of Religion in 
the days of Henri IV. In another sense, 
however, Saint-Simon was a prophet of things 
new and the first man of the eighteenth 
century. The same aloofness that made 
him seem old-fashioned, his virtual isolation 
in the midst of a court which he condemned, 
95 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

his occasional exile from the royal presence, 
gave him his distinguishing faculty of in- 
dependent vision and plain speech. He was 
often too violently swayed by passion to see 
things as they really were; but the eyes he 
saw with were at least his own, and he was 
a man. This duke and peer, so tenacious 
of the prerogatives of his order, would have 
been surprised to be called a revolutionary 
writer, yet his memoirs are the earliest and 
no small contribution to the great literature 
of protest which represents at least three- 
fourths of eighteenth-century French thought. 
Louis de Rouvroy, Due de Saint-Simon, 
was born in 1675 of an ancient family which 
traced its lineage back to Charlemagne. He 
died in 1755. Of his father Sainte-Beuve 
says : " If I had to define in two words 
Saint-Simon's father, I should say that he 
was a favorite, but not a courtier, for he 
had a sense of honor and a temper." The 
son inherited both, adding to them a pro- 
nounced literary instinct of most uncommon 
quality. In 1693, after the battle of Neer- 
winden, in which he served as an officer of 
the Royal Roussillon regiment, he sent to 
his mother a graphic account of the cam- 
paign. The next year, he began system ati- 
96 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

cally to write his memoirs, while still in the 
army. In 1694, the famous Due de Luxem- 
bourg, puffed up by his victories in these 
wars, " thought himself strong enough to 
rise from the eighteenth rank, which he 
held among the peers, to the second." Six- 
teen dukes and peers, Saint-Simon the most 
eager of them all, protested against this as- 
sault on their prerogatives. Henceforth the 
memoirs are colored throughout by a sense 
of injustice and a determination to resist 
encroachments upon his order or his per- 
sonal rights. Virtuous, pious in a narrow 
but real sense, animated even in youth by 
an old man's reverence for the past and 
for ancient forms of procedure, stubbornly 
jealous of his title, and acquainted with the 
family history of all the French nobility and 
most of the hangers-on at court, he was 
ill fitted to succeed there, but admirably 
prepared to observe and record the truth. 
Making every allowance for the bitterness 
of his invective and his constant bias, which 
is frankly disclosed, Saint-Simon is yet the 
capital authority for the history of court life 
in France from 1692 to 1723. It is doubt- 
ful if his passion really invalidates, in any 
essential respect, his documentary value. 
7 97 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

Passion, not so much poetic as personal, 
informs his pages. They glow with intense 
heat. The hurrying phrases crowd each 
other like panting horses in a race. As 
Nisard pithily says, " Saint-Simon is at the 
same time cumbersome and full of rushing 
power; he is a torrent which appears em- 
barassed by the debris it floats, but sweeps 
none the less swiftly on." His abundance is 
only equalled by the breathless vehemence 
of his purpose. From austere judgments on 
questions of law he turns deftly to light anec- 
dotes. Whatever comes uppermost in his 
mind is made to serve his turn. Elaborate 
portraits are mingled with pregnant insinua- 
tions conveyed in a brief phrase. As noth- 
ing escaped his eye, so he shrinks from no 
detail and spares no susceptibilities. Hot re- 
sentment of injury alternates with tumultu- 
ous, stammering, stamping exultation over 
his enemies' defeat, even in the most trifling 
matters. The vastness of the cupidities 
engaged in these questions of precedence 
makes us forget the pettiness of the dis- 
putes, as Nisard again remarks. The me- 
moirs of Saint-Simon would be a boon to 
a man in solitary confinement or cast away 
on a desert island, for they quickly draw 

9 8 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

around one a narrow, but distinct and un- 
broken, horizon, and fill the circumscribed 
space with a rich abundance of varied and 
highly developed human beings, moved by 
complicated and restless passions, and inter- 
acting in a way both dramatic and real. 

As becomes a duke and peer, and it might 
be added, as becomes a great master of lan- 
guage, Saint-Simon is superior to the plebeian 
restrictions of grammar. With a paragraph, 
a phrase, a word, he summons from happy 
oblivion and hangs up in the picture-gallery 
of immortal condemnation the sycophants 
and parasites who stole by crawling what he 
scorned to stoop for, though it was his own. 
The indubitable literary success of his writ- 
ings is a proof, if any be needed, that an 
intensely passionate expression of abundant 
knowledge is three-fourths of a great style. 

His power of reproduction in words is 
superb. He could reproduce so well because 
he remembered precisely. He remembered 
precisely because he saw with the vividness of 
keen personal feeling. Hence the style of the 
memoirs is a sufficient witness to their truth- 
fulness. They possess us in detail with the 
record of more than one day at court, from 
the king's putting on his shirt and saying 

99 
Ltffc 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

his morning prayer, to the evening card- 
party, lighted by we know just how many 
candles, and followed by the grand and the 
petit coucher. Accounts of what happened in 
the long hours between are given with the 
fulness of stenographic reports, but in the 
richly colored language of a great artist. 
We see the king and Madame de Mainte- 
non at Mass, then seated together at the 
council-table. We hear courtiers having an 
audience; we read their satisfaction or dis- 
appointment on their faces, and catch their 
whispered asides as they bow themselves out 
of the Presence. We walk at a respectful dis- 
tance behind the Monarch as he strolls in 
the afternoon sunlight beside his fish-ponds at 
Versailles, and travel in due order behind his 
ponderous coach on the royal progresses. 

It must not be supposed that Saint-Simon 
paints these scenes with deliberate artistic 
purpose. This, like a too careful observance 
of grammatical rules, would have been be- 
neath his dignity. They are not descriptive, 
but narrative; all the more wonderful art 
for that reason, of course, like the highest 
dramatic poetry, but art without effort. 

Saint-Simon's representation of court life 
under Louis XIV., while more interesting 

IOO 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

than the comparatively colorless eulogy of 
Voltaire, is on the whole unfavorable. No 
one acquainted with Saint-Simon can main- 
tain, if anybody still does maintain, a wor- 
shipful attitude towards the Grand Monarch. 
Yet some allowance must be made for per- 
sonal disappointment. The king disap- 
proved, naturally, of the young hot-head 
who was known to be taking notes. Doubt- 
less Saint-Simon was a vehement talker. 
Doubtless he vented his resentment, not only 
on paper, after retiring from the day's oc- 
cupations to the privacy of his study, but 
openly in conversation. We know, in fact, 
from his own inimitable account of the inter- 
view, that the old king reprimanded him once 
for the freedom of his expressions. 

Of course, Saint-Simon never dreamed of 
what we should term political progress, in 
the direction of liberal government. His 
ideal lay in the past, and was the feudal sys- 
tem, wherein royal prerogative was limited by 
equally inviolable baronial rights. For him 
the people had no political existence. He 
was far from realizing that feudalism could 
never return. He did dimly foresee that 
by breaking down the independence of the 
nobility royalty would be left face to face 

IOI 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

with the voiceless masses; but that the 
masses should ever stir into political activity 
we have no evidence of his having even sur- 
mised. He was revolutionary only in that 
he dared to see, and in an unsystematic way 
to criticise. Little did he know that in the 
existing stage of political evolution, move- 
ment could be only in one direction, and 
that to breathe was to precipitate an 
avalanche. 

It is revolutionary thought and revolution- 
ary writing which must almost exclusively 
engage the attention of any one dealing with 
the history of French literature during the 
eighteenth century. We may go further, and 
say during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries. Modern French literature, no less 
than modern French political history, is a 
record of swiftly varying temperatures, hallu- 
cinations beautiful or vile, periods of exhaus- 
tion alternating with outbursts of abnormal 
energy, now a noble exaltation, now a blind, 
brutal spasm. The study of modern French 
literature, and by modern I mean to include 
both the last centuries, seems at times to be 
largely a pathological study. It is the study 
of a national mind which seems at times not 
altogether sane. We have left the classical 

I02 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

period, serenely beautiful, serenely strong, 
and entered a period of unrest and disorder. 
Henceforth we shall observe much to dis- 
quiet us if we possess any feeling for the 
classic type, much to confuse our notions of 
what art is and what it should and can ex- 
press. Our attention will be drawn by her 
literature to all points of the complicated 
problem of France's destiny. We shall be 
forced to contemplate her social ills, her 
political strifes, her moral weaknesses. We 
shall witness a bewildering confusion of 
ideals, forms, and systems. We shall per- 
haps fancy we detect a falling off in vigor, 
a loss of balance, and in recent years an 
appalling decline. Are these phenomena 
symptoms of a real disease, or are they 
but the pangs of birth and growth? A 
great hope has animated and still animates 
the on-lookers, — a hope that out of many 
changes the Best may yet emerge. It is this 
sense of witnessing a crisis, in which the in- 
complete is striving for perfection, that lends 
peculiar fascination to the study of revolu- 
tionary eras. In any case, whether the ulti- 
mate issue be life or death, the literature of 
modern France is alive in every part, and full 
of strange surprises. 

103 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

The structural perfection of the system 
which absolutism had created was the very- 
thing that rendered impossible any change 
short of revolution. From its very com- 
pleteness it was incapable of adaptation. 
For example, the fact that the sale of public 
offices was normal made all members of the 
office-holding class rich, contented, depend- 
ent on one another, and independent of 
the people at large. The government was 
a close corporation, firmly centralized, con- 
veniently managed, almost automatic. Its 
affairs could be controlled quietly. No con- 
stitution, no political parties, no elections, no 
parliament, no debates, no public meetings 
rallied and excited general opinion. It was 
less difficult for the French government to 
declare war than for the English govern- 
ment to pension a doorkeeper. The public 
was seldom called upon to awake from 
its lethargy to consider troublesome ques- 
tions. There may well, then, have been 
some difficulty in persuading the comfort- 
able bourgeois class that they were not 
well governed, and immense difficulty in 
forcing their rulers to change the smallest 
detail of the system. 

Orderly reformation was impossible not 
104 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

only for these reasons, but because of the 
poverty and ignorance of the bread-produc- 
ing and tax-paying peasantry, out of whom 
had been starved all that vigor which might 
have armed a French Wiclif or Wat Tyler, a 
French Luther or Lincoln. If it be difficult 
to think of the French peasantry of that age, 
or even the social stratum next above the 
peasantry, as putting forth such fruit, and 
if the parallel seem therefore inexact, this 
really does but illuminate the situation. 
The impossibility of quiet, slow reform was 
doubled by the fact that the tyranny itself 
was double. It was not only political, but 
religious. Inseparably bound up in the 
theory of royal supremacy was the dogma 
of the inerrancy of the Church. Temporal 
and spiritual authority were under mutual 
obligations. Their united weight was ir- 
resistible. The faintest whisper of political 
dissent was regarded as an heretical outcry. 
The mildest forms of religious independence 
were liable to be crushed out by civil power. 
This was a matter, too, of still more intimate 
character, for every political reformer had 
first to struggle with his own conscience, 
realizing that he must give up reform or lose 
his religious equilibrium. And in any case, 
io 5 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

when men did dare to inquire what caused 
the enfeeblement of the nation and their own 
misery, they saw that even should the mon- 
archy abate its claims and release its pressure, 
the Church would still remain, a crushing 
load on property, law, and mind. 

The Huguenots, who might have led their 
countrymen to face this problem, and whose 
ancestors, indeed, once had heroically faced it, 
were now in exile or silenced by the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. By permitting the 
Jesuits to break up the Port Royal schools, 
Louis XIV. had stifled another intelligent 
party from which leaders might have arisen. 
By the dragonnades of the Cevennes he had 
stilled the inarticulate murmur of the peas- 
ant and mountaineer. Thus, with no hope 
of organic reform, there was needed a cata- 
clysm, a tidal wave, an earthquake. Yet the 
upheaval was to be prepared slowly. The 
process of preparation was to be a gradual 
indoctrination. It was to work from above 
downward. It was to be intellectual. No 
other process was possible, because any 
other would have been detected and stopped. 
A scholar of noble blood, and moving in 
the highest circles, might teach almost 
openly what a man without these advantages 
1 06 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

would scarce be permitted to think. It was 
a task for the philosopher, rather than the 
practical man, for the scholarly critic, rather 
than the active politician. 

This great responsibility was laid first of 
all upon a few men of letters. Never, prob- 
ably, in the history of the world, did litera- 
ture perform such an important political task. 
And it is scarcely an exaggeration to say 
that to this work French literature of the 
eighteenth century was entirely devoted. If 
literature thus achieved a triumph in poli- 
tics, it was at no small sacrifice, for in being 
so absorbed in public life it lost grandeur, 
variety, and charm. Instead of Pascal's high 
speculations on divine and human nature, ab- 
stract and free from bias, we find the political 
pamphlet, written to persuade, and brimful of 
" tendencies." Instead of the genial La Fon- 
taine, instilling wisdom by a nudge or a smile, 
like a good-natured fellow-traveller on life's 
way, we find the pedantic insistence of the 
Encyclopedists. From one end of the cen- 
tury to the other, literature written simply to 
please is almost wanting. Controversial in- 
tentions pervade even most of the profes- 
sedly belletristic writing. Poetry suffers 
most. Indeed it may be questioned whether 
107 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

a line of real poetry was written in all that 
period, down to Andre de Chenier, just before 
its close. Much excellent work was done in 
comedy, but it is worthy of remark that " Le 
Manage de Figaro," the most notable dra- 
matic success of the century, was political in 
fundamental conception and in effect. In 
tragedy, Voltaire strove to continue the clas- 
sical tradition, writing plays which conform 
rigidly to the type as perfected by Racine. 
But they are barren of true poetry. They 
are clever and correct, but neither grand nor 
touching. Eloquent prose is wanting also, 
except in Rousseau and his followers. After 
Massillon there were no great literary preach- 
ers, — no Bossuets or Fenelons of the eigh- 
teenth century. The age was rich, however, 
in the kinds of literary success which re- 
quire less genius, and for which intelligence 
and political aspiration suffice. Letter-writ- 
ing and memoir-writing especially attained 
perfection. The prose style of Voltaire, 
Madame du Deffand, Vauvenargues, and 
their contemporaries in the early half of 
the century, though deficient in eloquence 
and pathos, is unequalled as a means of 
ordinary social intercourse. 

Rousseau, at first alone, and seconded only 
1 08 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

late in his life by the slowly kindling enthusi- 
asm of a new school, imparts a touch of poetic 
fire to French thought in the latter half of 
the century. To complete our general view 
of the eighteenth century in France, it would 
be necessary to consider the revolutionary 
synthesis, to observe how the disintegrating 
work of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists was 
followed by the constructive work of the Ge- 
nevan dreamer. No systematic understanding 
of the subject is possible without an apprecia- 
tion of his place as the prophet of that age, 
who built for later times. The singular fas- 
cination of the man, the mysterious begin- 
ning and end of his career, the loneliness of 
his high merits, the unusual circumstances 
and time of life when they appeared, the 
elemental forces which he fingered with ele- 
mental genius, the passion he stirred, and 
finally the lasting and wide-reaching results 
of his work, are topics which would naturally . 
occupy the second half of any thorough sur- 
vey of that era. He gives color to a period 
of French literature that but for him and 
Saint-Simon might seem to lack the glow of 
imagination. 

Except Buffon, there is no great eighteenth- 
century French author whose works are not 
109 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

more or less charged with revolutionary 
lightning. And these men were in most 
cases conscious of their mission. They 
were nearly all filled with a common spirit of 
reform, which was a bond among themselves 
and a distinction. Of course there were 
others who wrote without any political am- 
bition, but even their books have a strong 
revolutionary tendency, as, for example, the 
Abbe Prevost's celebrated novel, " Manon 
Lescaut." It is evident from a glance at 
eighteenth-century French literature that the 
earlier writers, with Voltaire as their central 
figure, were devoted mainly to the task of 
destroying the existing system, and that the 
later company, inspired by Rousseau, were 
constructors, dreamers of ideal common- 
wealths, and founders, to some extent, of 
modern society. I think we shall not be 
making one of those excessively sweeping 
generalizations which are so dangerous in 
literary study, but shall be simplifying the 
matter in a legitimate way, if we keep in 
mind these preliminary conclusions: that 
French literature of the eighteenth century 
is mainly political, that it is revolutionary, 
and that it is in part analytic and in part 
synthetic. 

no 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

Montesquieu, the first great French writer 
belonging to the eighteenth century, except 
Saint-Simon, is the prototype of all who 
followed him. He contains in germ the 
analysis and the synthesis. He was the 
forerunner of Voltaire, and even more cer- 
tainly of RousseauJ It is remarkable how 
much can now be discerned in him that 
we find more fully developed in the next 
generation. Fortunately for his peace, Mon- 
tesquieu's genius was not fully appreciated 
in his lifetime. It is doubtful whether pos- 
terity also has not underestimated him. 
Though not so potent, he is perhaps a finer 
spirit than Voltaire, and in the line of politi- 
cal speculation a greater writer. His prose 
suffers little by comparison with Voltaire's. 
Indeed, in some respects it rather gains, be- 
cause it has certain graces which Voltaire's 
style lacks. There is no hardness, crudity, 
or haste in Montesquieu. He is always ele- 
gant, and even leisurely, seeking to produce 
a cumulative and permanent effect. His 
ambition is always artistic completeness. In 
this he reminds us constantly of the writers 
of the preceding reign. It is a great achieve- 
ment to have been in spirit a forerunner of 
the new era, while preserving in form the 
in 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

superior finish of the older and more gracious 
generation. If he yet leaves us cold, if he 
fails to enthrone himself in our affections or 
to stir our enthusiasm, he shares in this the 
fate of every other eighteenth-century French 
writer except Saint-Simon and Rousseau. 

The story of his life is very simple, and 
his principal works, which are only three in 
number, may be mentioned in a few words. 
Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de 
Montesquieu, was born at the castle of La 
Brede, near Bordeaux, in 1689, of a noble 
family of Guyenne, and died in 1755. He 
received a sound classical education, and 
through family influence and his own abilities 
acquired a high standing in the law courts of 
Bordeaux, becoming president-judge in 1 716, 
at the age of twenty-seven. His interest in 
literature and science found expression in the 
meetings of the young Academy of Bordeaux. 
He was of the opinion that literature could 
not be well cultivated except in great capitals, 
where many men of genius might afford the 
needed mutual stimulus ; but that provin- 
cial academies could render valuable aid to 
science, by collecting data and performing 
experiments. 

In 172 1, he published, anonymously, and 
112 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

only in foreign cities, Cologne and Amster- 
dam, two little volumes purporting to con- 
tain the letters written home by two Persians 
travelling in France. Paris is as strange to 
them as Ispahan would be to a European. 
They are interested in all such things as 
modes of travel, hotels, architecture, dress, 
and food, which might be expected to differ 
in various countries. They are astonished 
at the even greater dissimilarity in matters 
which might be supposed to differ less, such 
as religion, law, government, marriage re- 
lations, and education. They are amused by 
the sharper and more puzzling contrast in 
minor things, affairs of mere convention, such 
as social etiquette. The " Lettres persanes " 
are vastly entertaining, and must have been 
more so when they first appeared. One can 
enjoy them for their own sake, for their fine 
observations, their subtle irony, their urbane 
style. It is not and was not necessary to 
see in them a serious attack on the institu- 
tions of Montesquieu's time. It was possible 
to regard them as a good-natured, genial 
criticism, and the government, after some 
hesitation, chose to take this view. But 
when we think of the serious, thorough- 
going work their author afterwards per- 
8 113 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

formed, it seems likely he intended the 
" Lettres persanes " to mean all they now 
appear to imply. Whatever diversity of 
opinion might exist as to their political im- 
port, their literary value received prompt 
acknowledgment, and after some objections 
on the part of Louis XV. and his ministers 
had been cleared away, Montesquieu was ad- 
mitted to the Academie franchise, in January, 
1728. 

He had already begun to collect material 
for other works in what we should now term 
comparative social science and comparative 
jurisprudence, and felt that he ought to see 
other countries. He set out, in April, 1728, 
in company with the English ambassador to 
Vienna, lived there a while, travelled in Hun- 
gary and Germany, spent a considerable time 
in Italy, turned northward again, and stayed 
in the Low Countries till October, 1729, when 
he passed over to England. Here he re- 
mained two years. He was the guest of 
Lord Chesterfield, was received at court by 
George II., and became a member of the 
Royal Society. He saw Sir Robert Walpole, 
Swift, and Pope. A mighty spirit of prog- 
ress prevailed in England at that time. She 
was the home of liberty and of ideas. The 
114 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

supremacy of reason was loudly asserted. 
And yet, though the influence of a sterner 
generation, the generation of Milton and 
Locke, was still felt, and though Newton 
had been their worthy successor, King 
George's reign was not the period, nor was 
the London literary circle the society, to 
impress a Frenchman with a just apprecia- 
tion of England's moral depth or religious 
sincerity. Montesquieu became acquainted 
with England when her religious life was 
less active than it had been in many years. 
But he came at a favorable moment for ob- 
serving the great change in her constitution, 
a change by that time already partly accom- 
plished and partly still in operation. Many 
of the men with whom he associated were 
among the leaders of the Whig party. Con- 
stitutional liberty was their watchword. The 
nation had taken several great strides forward 
in the direction of a broader freedom, and 
was congratulating itself that at least no harm 
was done. A rationalistic party was promi- 
nent in the Church of England. Deism was 
fashionable in literary circles. Philosophy 
as opposed to theology, natural religion as 
opposed to revelation, seemed to be winning 
the day. No shock was felt at discoveries 
"5 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

and discourses which would have brought 
men to the rack and stake in France. At 
any time, but then especially, a Frenchman 
bred under the old regime must have found 
England a paradise of freedom. Free speech, 
free printing, the right of assembly, religious 
toleration, taxation by Parliament only, the 
law of habeas corpus, trial by jury, freedom 
to move unquestioned from town to town, 
the suffrage, limited though it was, — all 
these were things unknown and almost un- 
dreamed of in France, but taken for granted, 
many of them as an immemorial heritage, in 
England. No wonder Montesquieu, and, 
later, Voltaire and Rousseau, were attracted 
to England, and received there a decided 
bent. Only in Britain and her colonies, and 
in heroic Holland, were these rights of man 
then maintained. 

n^ After his long and fruitful travels, Montes- 
quieu spent two years quietly at La Brede, 
completing his second great work, " Con- 
siderations sur la Cause de la Grandeur et de 
la Decadence des Romains," which he pub- 
lished in 1734. It is not a large book, but 
covers the subject. It was impossible to 
treat of national aggrandizement and decline, 
without reference, direct or indirect, to the 
116 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

exalted state of France under Louis XIV., 
and to the symptoms of weakness which had 
multiplied so alarmingly under the Regent. 
And here we come upon the other influence 
which, next to the example of England, most 
affected French political thought through- 
out the first three-quarters of the eigh- 
teenth century. This was the example, apt 
or fanciful, of the ancient Greek and Roman 
commonwealths. Solon and Lycurgus, the 
Horatii, Cincinnatus, Brutus, and Cicero were 
names to conjure with. The Latin classics, 
particularly, were very familiar to the average 
educated Frenchman of that day. Those 
passages which celebrate liberty and the 
Republic were regarded with reverence, and 
from them French authors were accustomed 
to draw most of their political illustrations, 
so that Montesquieu's " Considerations " was 
in line with the taste of his age. Its origi- 
nality lay in the application, more or less 
plainly indicated, which Montesquieu made 
of these old examples. The work was a 
specimen of real philosophy of history, use- 
ful to his contemporaries because bravely 
facing the issues of the time, and a permanent 
contribution to literature because greatly con- 
ceived and admirably written. 
117 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

During fourteen years after the publication 
of this work, from 1734 to 1748, Montesquieu 
lived at La Brede and Paris, in full touch 
with many of the best minds of France. He 
was laboring on his masterpiece, " L'Esprit 
des Lois," a profounder work than either of 
the others, though perhaps not more effec- 
tive than the " Lettres persanes." " L'Esprit 
des Lois " is one of the first and noblest con- 
tributions in modern times to the science of 
comparative jurisprudence. Primitive as is 
its method, narrow as is its statistical range, 
the conclusions reached are singularly nu- 
merous and sound. It is pervaded with the 
breath of genius. None but a deep and 
comprehensive mind, endowed with a verita- 
ble instinct for observing relationships, could 
have made so many successful generaliza- 
tions on so small a basis of facts. With a 
rather loose arrangement, the ideas are yet 
very clearly presented. It is a book which 
contains the results of much reading and 
more thinking. Each page seems the prod- 
uct, the secretion, of a lifetime. A vast 
and complicated subject is reduced to a sim- 
plicity which, though perhaps illusory, is cer- 
tainly fascinating. 

s» Even in this calm, scientific work, the 
118 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

outcome of an orderly and studious life, we 
can plainly discern the revolutionary bias. 
By the mere fact that he showed Frenchmen 
the possibility of living under law in some 
other than a despotic regime, Montesquieu 
awakened longings for a change. But he 
went further. He states that there are three 
forms of government, — despotic, monarchi- 
cal, and republican, and defines them thus: 
" The republican government is that in which 
the people as a whole, or only a part of the 
people, possess the sovereign power ; the mon- 
archical, that in which only one person gov- 
erns, but by fixed and established laws; 
whereas in the despotic government a single 
person, without law and without restraint, 
determines all things by his will and his 
caprice." Full of respect and admiration for 
the republics of antiquity and the constitu- 
tional government of England, and employ- 
ing as his chief argument their success and 
the happiness of their subjects, he hesitates 
between monarchy and republic, but never 
falters in his impeachment of despotism, 
which we must remember was the French 
form. And the most brilliant part of the 
book, where his faculty of divination has 
freest play, is the chapter on the English 
119 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

People and the chapter on the French Mon- 
archy. He does justice to the English char- 
acter and constitution, magnificent justice for 
a Frenchman, and such as no other of his 
countrymen has ever done before or since, 
not excepting even Taine. And, finally, I do 
not know any subtler characterization of the 
French spirit than this : Society life under 
the monarchy " is the school of what is called 
honor, the universal master who shall be 
everywhere our guide. Three things we ob- 
serve there and find constantly mentioned: 
that our virtues should be touched with a 
certain nobleness, our morals with a certain 
freedom, our manners with a certain polite- 
ness. The virtues exhibited in this society 
are always less what one owes to others, than 
what one owes to one's self; they are not so 
much a response to an appeal from our fel- 
low-citizens, as a mark of distinction between 
us and them. In this society men's actions 
are judged not as good, but as handsome; 
not as just, but as great; not as reasonable, 
but as extraordinary. When honor can point 
to something noble in them, it becomes the 
judge, and renders them legitimate, or the 
sophist, and justifies them." 
' As may be inferred even from these cita- 

120 



SAINT-SIMON AND MONTESQUIEU 

tions, Montesquieu was both a destructive 
critic and a constructive critic. He attacked 
abuses ; but on almost every page, especially 
of " L 'Esprit des Lois," he proposes as a 
substitute for despotism the institution of a 
limited monarchy. He acquaints us, there- 
fore, in advance with the double aspect of the 
Revolution, with the revolutionary analysis 
and the revolutionary synthesis. 



121 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 
VOLTAIRE 



123 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 
VOLTAIRE 

Montesquieu's life-work was an attack on 
the existing state of things in France by dis- 
closing the political causes of oppression and 
by offering constitutional monarchy as a 
substitute for absolutism. His method was 
scholarly rather than popular, subtle rather 
than sensational, — so scholarly, so subtle, 
and on the whole so cautious, that he escaped 
persecution and his works found a welcome 
in unexpected quarters. They were regarded 
complacently by courtiers and tax-collectors, 
and with tolerance by bishops. Speculative 
essays in the sphere of politics were not yet 
capable of exciting passion, because the pos- 
sibility of revolution was scarcely dreamed 
of. Besides, Montesquieu, except by innuendo 
in the " Lettres persanes," did not undertake 
systematically the more serious task of criti- 
cising the national religion and the national 
culture, which were even more intimate ele- 
ments of national life. 

'25 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

Government is external and uninfluential 
as compared with these two factors, which 
constitute in largest measure the lives of in- 
dividuals first and then of the community. 
Men who might contemplate with indiffer- 
ence a change in the government would 
resent the slightest criticism of their per- 
sonal beliefs and habits. It is one thing 
to be told you do not live under the best 
possible form of government, and a far more 
startling thing to be told that your religion is 
folly, your science antiquated, and your con- 
duct irrational. Montesquieu was not severe 
ss except in his judgment of the political system 
under which France groaned. Yet religion 
and education needed reform even more than 
did the government. The peasantry were 
little better than heathen. Their religion 
was little above paganism. The bourgeoisie 
were almost as bigoted as the peasants, with- 
out the saving grace of simplicity. Religion 
in the noble class was almost wholly formal. 
The peasantry were illiterate. The education 
of the bourgeoisie, the middle or trading class, 
was in the hands of the clergy, and man- 
aged entirely in the interest of the Church. 
Even the best schools, which were patron- 
ized by the aristocracy and the wealthier 
126 



VOLTAIRE 

bourgeoisie, taught nothing well except lan- 
guages and mathematics. Physical science, 
nowhere beyond its childhood at that time, 
was in its infancy among the French. Medi- 
cine and surgery had made little progress 
in France since the sixteenth century. In 
philosophy Descartes and Pascal had had no 
worthy successors, and even the speculations 
of these great metaphysicians were withheld 
from all but the most advanced students. Of 
course, modern history was unfairly taught. 

It would seem that here was an impossible 
task, — to make people conscious of their 
condition, and then to introduce a purer re- 
ligion, or a substitute for religion, and a new 
intellectual life. But some men are every- 
where to be found, not necessarily the strong- 
est or finest spirits, who are protestant and 
dissident at heart, ready for a change, ready 
to form a radical party. It may be easily 
imagined, then, that there were burning hearts 
in France during the reign of Louis XV., 
inaptly called the "Well Beloved. ,, But free 
thought dared not employ free speech. It 
would, however, have been strange if among 
the enlightened few in France, heirs of the 
wit of Rabelais and Moliere, bred on Mon- 
taigne's questioning philosophy, and encour- 
127 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

aged by Montesquieu's success, there had not 
been one man bold enough to speak out 
against intellectual and religious oppression. 
The man was already born, — Voltaire, the 
incarnation of the revolutionary spirit. It is 
convenient, perhaps even too convenient, to 
study the literature of the Revolution, par- 
ticularly in its analytical phase, through the 
life and works of this great representative. 
If Montesquieu is the strategist, and laid 
down with academic coolness the lines on 
which the battle should be fought, Voltaire is 
the general, with whom we associate the strife 
itself. He bore the burden and heat of the 
day. He lived a long, conspicuous life, more 
than sixty years of which were years of im- 
mense productiveness and unusual publicity. 
His field of action was broader than Montes- 
quieu's, for he concerned himself not so much 
with theories of government as with the whole 
world of thought, — with social studies, natu- 
ral science, philosophy, morality, and religion. 
Indeed, considering the effects of his teach- 
ing, it is remarkable how little attention he 
paid to questions of government. He was in 
fact not ill at ease in a despotism, and cer- 
tainly if he dreamed of a republic he had no 
thought of its being a possibility for France. 
128 



VOLTAIRE 

It is chiefly as a revolutionary writer that the 
world regards him now; but he was not 
merely that either, and his contemporaries 
valued other qualities in him more highly 
than they did his reformatory zeal. 

Perhaps it is nearest the truth to say that, 
as the foremost man of letters in France, he 
translated and illustrated revolutionary ten- 
dencies which originated in society at large. 
Literature, not politics or even philosophy, 
was his profession. Yet by every passing 
generation Voltaire's literary work is less and 
less enjoyed, while his place as a factor in the 
Revolution is becoming more and more as- 
sured. His poems, his plays, his novels, which 
were once deemed immortally bright, have 
taken on somewhat of the dull hue of age. 
We read them now, not for themselves, but 
for what they reveal of their author and his 
century. Historical interest has superseded 
intrinsic interest. The reason for this is 
plain. Voltaire as poet and dramatist was a 
continuator of Boileau and Racine; he re- 
flects the calm and steady radiance of these 
great masters. On the contrary, the personal, 
social, political, and philosophical side of his 
work gives light of itself, and is frankly of the 
eighteenth century. 

9 129 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

And since he was the central literary figure 
in France throughout the second and third 
quarters of the eighteenth century, he is the 
most valuable witness to what the thought 
and feeling of that time really were. His 
own contribution to revolutionary forces was, 
of course, only what one man could do, and 
that was small in comparison with the deeper 
swelling of popular revolt. But it was per- 
haps the principal individual contribution. 
And coming early in the struggle, Voltaire's 
influence was necessarily destructive. We 
shall therefore be simplifying our work if we 
take him as the representative of the analyti- 
cal forces in literature which were part of 
the French revolution. 

His real name was Francois Marie Arouet. 
He was born in Paris, in 1694, and died 
there in 1778. His father was a rich law- 
yer, and his family on both sides belonged 
to the haute bourgeoisie, or upper middle 
class. He received his education from the 
Jesuits, at the College Louis-le-Grand, where 
he was quickly recognized by his masters as 
a boy who could write. They took pains to 
cultivate his aptitude for composition, and it 
is worth noticing how much attention was 
paid to this matter in an age when education 
13° 



1 



VOLTAIRE 

in most other branches was superficial. The 
most significant feature of Voltaire's youth is 
that he early conceived it to be his mission in 
life to write poetry, and made distinct and 
well-regulated efforts to educate himself to 
this end. The influences which surrounded 
him were bad. His cleverness made him wel- 
come to a group of dissipated older men, 
men of intellect, but without morals, several 
of them concealing under priests' gowns the 
hearts of infidels and the lives of libertines. 
For him henceforth it was impossible to con- 
ceive of a clergyman who could possess at 
the same time intellectual candor and moral 
uprightness. Mr. Morley remarks that prob- 
ably the only sincere and decent person of 
the whole set was the celebrated courtesan, 
Ninon de l'Enclos, who died in 1705, at the 
age of ninety, when Voltaire was eleven years 
old, and left him a legacy for the purchase of 
books. Young Arouet's father did what he 
could to extricate him from bad company, by 
getting him an appointment under the French 
ambassador in Holland, whither the young 
man went with high hopes of seeing the world 
and pursuing his vocation of poet. At the 
Hague he fell in love with the daughter of a 
French lady living there in exile, and the am- 
I 3 I 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

bassador sent him home. Up to this time he 
had been nothing but a wit, — a writer of minor 
verse, chiefly satirical. But after his return, 
when he was twenty-two, an epigram of his 
against the Prince Regent was widely circu- 
lated, and he was accused falsely of having 
written a number of satirical verses called 
LesJ'ai vu> describing the wretched condition 
of France and the malignant power of the 
Jesuits. He was thrown into the Bastille on 
a lettre de cachet, and imprisoned there nearly 
a year. His incarceration ripened him, and 
after that he too could say JTai vu. 

He employed the time of his captivity in 
writing plays, and beginning what he deter- 
mined should be the great epic of France, 
" La Henriade," a poem celebrating the life 
and times of Henri IV., the king who, more 
than any other since Saint Louis, had made 
an impression on the hearts and imaginations 
of the French people. For seven years after 
his release, in 1718, he continued working at 
this, and always had a play or two on hand, 
for he aspired, even till his death, at the age 
of eighty-four, to win a place with Racine as 
a great tragic poet. These seven years were 
spent going to and fro among rich, dissolute 
people, who entertained him at their houses, 
132 



VOLTAIRE 

enjoying his witty conversation and aiming to 
be thought patrons of literature. 

In consequence of a quarrel with a scion 
of the noble house of Rohan, who had him 
horsewhipped by his lackeys for an epigram, 
Voltaire was again imprisoned, and on his re- 
lease was exiled from Paris. Providing him- 
self with letters of introduction to certain of 
the celebrities of England, he fled to that 
land of liberty. This was in 1726. His nar- 
rative of his first impressions of the Thames 
and of London is one of the freshest and most 
delightful passages in his works. He liked 
the country. He liked the people. He 
flourished in the air of freedom. With char- 
acteristic zeal he fell to work on the English 
language, and mastered it, as few foreigners 
ever do, becoming proficient not only in 
composition, but in speech. His sojourn in 
England, from 1726 to 1729, directly pre- 
ceded the visit of Montesquieu, who lived 
there from 1729 to 1731. 

I have remarked that Voltaire conceived 
of himself first as a poet. He subsequently 
added . to this conception another. He be- 
gan during his English residence to regard 
himself as a warrior in the struggle of religious 
thought. Henceforth there is scarcely a line 
*33 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

of his but was intended as a contribution to 
this strife. On the termination of his exile, 
in 1729, he returned to France with an im- 
proved edition of " La Henriade," a play- 
entitled "Jules-Cesar/' the unfinished manu- 
script of his " Lettres sur les Anglais," and 
his " Histoire de Charles XII." The " Lettres 
sur les Anglais" began with an easy nar- 
rative of his arrival in London and a de- 
scription of the things there which seemed 
most curious to a Frenchman. Their princi- 
pal themes, however, are three, sometimes 
boldly enounced, sometimes deftly insinuated ; 
namely, the advantage of religious toleration 
as practised in England, the excellence of the 
English in administration and commerce, and 
the respect paid in England to science and 
literature. The titles of the letters are as fol- 
lows : England, The Quakers, Anglicanism, 
The Presbyterians, The Socinians or Arians, 
Parliament, The Government, Commerce, 
Vaccination, Lord Chancellor Bacon, Mr. 
Locke, Descartes and Newton, Gravitation, 
Mr. Newton's Optics, Infinity and Chronol- 
ogy, Tragedy, Comedy, Lords who cultivate 
Literature, Rochester and Waller, Pope and 
others, The Respect due to Men of Letters, 
The Academies, Anglomania. 
i34 



VOLTAIRE 

"Les Lettres sur les Anglais,'' following 
on the heels of Montesquieu's " Lettres per- 
sanes," produced a sharp awakening in France. 
Their tendency was not so cunningly masked 
as that of the " Lettres persanes," and the 
government was by this time aroused to the 
danger of such comparisons. So the book, 
although probably completed and printed in 
1 73 1, seems not to have been really published 
till 1734, when five editions appeared. Vol- 
taire's hesitation about publishing was justi- 
fied by the prosecutions with which he was 
at once threatened. He was obliged to flee 
from Paris to avoid arrest. 

The " Histoire de Charles XII." is re- 
garded by many persons as Voltaire's most 
perfect work. It had, moreover, great 
contemporary interest. Charles, King of 
Sweden, after a short, meteoric career of 
military prowess, had been killed at the siege 
of Frederikshald, in 171 8 ; so that Voltaire 
was writing very modern history in recounting 
his adventures. The book became at once, 
and has remained, a classic. It has almost 
the conciseness of Caesar's Commentaries, 
with a fluency and rapidity peculiarly Vol- 
taire's. It put him in the first rank of living 
historians. He next threw himself with pas- 
135 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

sionate energy into that " Histoire du Siecle 
de Louis XI V/' which is now regarded gen- 
erally as his greatest single work. 

By this time he had published or had 
caused to be circulated in private, not only 
the serious works above mentioned, but other 
productions serious in a different sense, — 
serious in the object of their attack and in 
their consequences for him. These were 
epigrams, short poems, numberless letters, 
and especially the first cantos of a blasphe- 
mous satire on the sacred story of Jeanne 
d'Arc, that most ideal figure in French his- 
tory and in the hearts of Frenchmen. This 
infamous jest, which he began in 1730 and 
strung out over a large part of his life, was 
entitled " La Pucelle." Its cynical baseness 
and profanation of religion, even more than 
its satirical references to the ancestors of 
powerful houses, completed Voltaire's dis- 
favor w r ith the authorities. They interfered 
now with all his publications, subjecting 
them to a galling censorship, and often 
forbidding him to print or sell his books. 
For a long time even " La Henriade " was 
under the ban. 

Voltaire's bitterness and assiduity in attack 
were intensified by something which occurred 
136 



VOLTAIRE 

in 1730. The celebrated actress, Adrienne 
Lecouvreur, who was a friend of his, was 
refused burial in consecrated ground because 
of her profession and because she had died 
without absolution. Her body was conveyed 
in a common cab, by a squad of policemen, 
to a spot outside the town. Voltaire's trend 
of mind was further strengthened by the 
" convulsionist miracles " which excited Paris 
in 1 73 1. It was reported that miraculous 
cures were wrought at the tomb of a deacon 
who died in 1727. Many persons of high 
standing in Paris, members of the austere 
Jansenist party or sect, resorted to the spot, 
where they suffered violent convulsions and 
prophesied. The authorities, to put an end 
to the excitement, closed the cemetery in 
which the deacon was buried. The question 
of the possibility of miracles was hotly de- 
bated, and the authorities were accused of 
inconsistency. 

In 1733, Voltaire formed a liaison with a 
woman celebrated at that time as a mathe- 
matician and physicist, Madame du Chatelet. 
Although her husband was living, and not at 
all on bad terms with her, she took Voltaire 
into her chateau at Cirey, near the southern 
border of Alsace, and lived with him sixteen 
i37 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

years. She possessed considerable wealth, 
and Voltaire, too, had begun to accumulate 
his vast fortune. Cirey was separated from 
the world by many miles of abominable roads. 
He was safe there from all enemies except 
ennui, Madame du Chatelet was a remark- 
able woman, a mathematician of some note, 
a diligent student of philosophy, and an un- 
wearied if not very successful writer. She kept 
Voltaire at her chateau at various times and 
for various lengths of time. This man of 
world-wide note was a slave to the caprice of 
an unhappy, unbalanced woman. Accord- 
ing to their own accounts, they worked hard 
at their separate literary and scientific occu- 
pations, inspiring each other's zeal for knowl- 
edge and helping each other in composition. 
Voltaire was possessed at this time with a 
lively but superficial interest in mechan- 
ical and chemical experiments, and as for 
Madame du Chatelet, nothing seems to have 
been uninteresting to her. She was engaged 
for a long time in verifying and translating 
the mathematical works of Sir Isaac Newton. 
According to Voltaire's statements, which are 
not always trustworthy, they often toiled 
sixteen hours a day. A most uncommon 
love-affair this, and not very idyllic. Alter- 



VOLTAIRE 

cations, lawsuits, jealousies, literary quarrels, 
and petty annoyances of all kinds are the 
principal themes of his letters from Cirey. 

The record of the years at Cirey, in a 
gloomy chateau, miles from any town, and 
several days from Paris, with a woman who 
swung between hard deism and silly senti- 
mentality, is reading stupid enough to make 
one almost doubt if this captive Odysseus were 
really Voltaire, elsewhere the mortal foe of 
ennui. Poetry was getting further than ever 
beyond his reach, as he lost whatever of poetic 
calmness and poetic purity he once possessed. 
He lived now, his enemies declared, like a 
jackal of the desert, outside the haunts of 
men, but unable to keep from howling at 
them in the dark. For he kept up a vigor- 
ous warfare against the Church and State, 
against custom, prejudice, ignorance, and 
superstition. Meanwhile he was becoming 
enormously rich, by shrewd investments. 
His fortune continued to increase until, at 
his death, he was for those times a very 
great capitalist. Amid all the pettiness of 
this part of his life, when vanity and hate 
made him an unhappy and uncompanionable 
man, there was one plain-featured but essen- 
tial virtue which he exercised to an unusual 
i39 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

extent. I mean the virtue of industry. Never 
did a man live more completely for his idea. 
Never did a man toil more unremittingly. 
He knew the objects of his attack to be so 
numerous and thick-skulled that not merely 
must his sword be keen, but its blows rapid. 
The man who would make any lasting im- 
pression on the superstitions and prejudices 
that propped the standard of absolutism 
must not only speak bold words, but keep 
on speaking them. 

A great deal may be said against Voltaire's 
mode of attack. It was often unfair. He 
habitually said one thing, and meant another 
and more offensive. He wrote many plays, 
for instance, particularly at this period, 1729- 
1750, between his return from England and 
his departure for Berlin, which contain hidden 
arguments against Christianity, or ridicule 
which is even more insidious. Of such may 
be mentioned "Zaire," 1732, "Alzire," 1736, 
"Mahomet," 1741, " Merope," 1743, and 
"Semiramis," 1748. 

On the other hand, it is true that the vigi- 
lance of his enemies made it impossible for 
him to speak openly. He was a broad 
mark for persecution. No movement of his 
escaped the notice of fanatical opponents, 
140 



VOLTAIRE 

whose methods were not more honorable 
than his own. It is true that he turned 
thousands of hearts away from Christianity 
by ridiculing the follies and inconsistencies 
of professed Christians. He led men to hate 
religion who had never read a reasoned argu- 
ment against it. Few really strong spirits 
were perverted by him, for his arguments 
are not substantial, being based on a totally 
inadequate foundation of scriptural and his- 
torical scholarship. While admitting the 
existence of God, he denied the authority 
of the Bible, the possibility of miracles, the 
divinity of Christ. Yet for biblical criticism 
he was not well equipped. Nevertheless, he 
succeeded in creating what we might almost 
call a national attitude of mind toward these 
high questions, and to this day there exists 
a large class of Frenchmen in whom his 
moral and mental temperament still lives. 
A hundred years ago, to be a middle-class 
Frenchman was to be a Voltairian, three 
times out of four. It is unfortunately the 
case in Latin countries that when men re- 
volt against the superstitions of the popular 
religion they generally fall into atheism, or 
an empty deism, which to all practical in- 
tents is nearly the same as atheism, and this 
141 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

is particularly true of the shrewd but narrow- 
minded French bourgeoisie. They are hard, 
unimaginative, wedded to material things, 
and quick to draw insufficient conclusions 
from a small appearance of fact. 

Yet, after all, and acknowledging the harm 
he did to many minds of his own and later 
generations, we cannot altogether condemn 
Voltaire for his fierce and subtle attack upon 
what passed for Christianity in France. 
There was more superstition than true reli- 
gion, more spiritual tyranny than meek and 
lowly faith, in the Roman Catholic Church 
of his day and country. To many of the 
best minds of Europe his voice was the 
trumpet-call of a deliverer. 

Young men especially lent a ready ear. 
One of the strongest and most youthful 
spirits then in the world was the Crown 
Prince Frederick of Prussia, later known as 
Frederick the Great. Brought up under 
martial rules by a despotic father, this en- 
thusiastic young man of genius had not yet 
tasted liberty, and he longed to expand, to 
put into action his palpitating emotions, to 
array his intellectual forces against great 
independent thinkers. One day in the toil- 
some retreat at Cirey Voltaire was surprised 
142 



VOLTAIRE 

by a long, ardent letter from the Prussian 
prince. This was the beginning of a volumi- 
nous correspondence. Madame du Chatelet 
grew jealous. It was with difficulty Voltaire 
persuaded her to let him meet Frederick at 
the frontier of Rhenish Prussia. But in 1749 
she died a most sad and tragic death, and 
Voltaire was free to accept the invitation of 
Frederick, now king of Prussia, to go to his 
court at Berlin and Potsdam. He was never 
safe from prosecution in France, and besides 
was of a restless disposition. His vanity, 
moreover, was tickled by the prospect of 
living as a distinguished guest at a court 
which, although far inferior in splendor to 
the court of Versailles, was already beginning 
to claim a rival eminence as a centre of 
learning. Frederick, himself an author, and 
a very voluminous author, of French prose 
and verse, was inaugurating his reign by up- 
building not only the military but the com- 
mercial and intellectual power of Prussia. 
His vast extension of the army came later. 
It is strange that his scheme for developing 
the resources of his country did not include 
strengthening the position of the German 
language and the production of a native 
literature. Since the age of the Reformation 
i43 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

there had scarcely been a living German 
literature, and in polite circles the German 
language was regarded as the speech of 
boors. Though his heart was German to the 
core, Frederick the Great desired to be in 
outward things like a French monarch. 

His purpose in drawing Voltaire to Berlin 
was to strengthen the national Academy, 
which he was fashioning after the model of 
the French Academy. It was a great stroke 
to capture the most notable living man of 
letters. Frederick and Voltaire and their 
Academy exerted a considerable influence 
on the intellectual development of Germany. 
They furnished the leading minds of the 
country with a centre of movement. They 
introduced somewhat of French distinctness 
into its hitherto vague intellectual atmos- 
phere. They gave definiteness to public 
questions. Their influence on religious 
thought in Germany was destructive, for 
the time being, and had much to do 
with the sceptical awakening or Aufklar- 
tmg, which, with all its obvious advantages, 
was not an unmixed good. An attack which 
in France might be authorized by the de- 
based condition of the Church, superstition 
having there in large measure taken the 
144 



VOLTAIRE 

place of true religion, would not have the 
same justification in Protestant Germany, 
The three years of Voltaire's sojourn at 
Berlin and Potsdam had, moreover, a bane- 
ful effect upon the development of German 
literature. He helped to make the German 
language and native German ideas unpopu- 
lar with the upper classes, who were induced 
by his ridicule and Frederick's example to 
neglect and despise the riches of their own 
country. French became more than ever 
the language of the Prussian court. French 
plays occupied the theatres. Even private 
correspondence was generally conducted in 
French. This was the darkest period in the 
history of German literature. For a whole 
generation these conditions prevailed, until 
Lessing, that brave, original, and patriotic 
man, by the conscious devotion of a lifetime, 
stirred his fatherland to shame and taught her 
to look to herself for regeneration. 

Voltaire's visit was brought to an end in 
1753 by his own irascibility and Frederick's 
growing independence of character. The 
latter revolted against his guest's trickiness, 
yet was not above meeting it with a mix- 
ture of brutality and subterfuge. Voltaire 
quarrelled also with another celebrated 
10 i 4S 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

Frenchman, Maupertuis, upon whom Fred- 
erick counted to lend distinction to his 
Academy, in physical science and mathe- 
matics. The outbreaks of fury and sarcasm 
which accompanied these disagreements were 
notorious throughout Europe, and Voltaire 
was chiefly responsible for this publicity. 
There was little of philosophic decorum, or 
even of ordinary good manners, displayed 
in these singular quarrels, which were not by 
any means the only ones of their kind be- 
tween " philosophes." Indeed French men 
of letters in the eighteenth century were 
not as a rule distinguished for nobility of 
conduct or refinement of spirit. In this they 
present a marked contrast with their prede- 
cessors of the seventeenth century. Untruth- 
fulness, jealousy, pretentiousness, contempt 
for social virtues, want of appreciation for 
poetry, art, and religion, — these bad quali- 
ties were common to nearly all of them. 
On the other hand, we find a praiseworthy 
devotion to the cause of free thought, and 
unflagging industry. 

After returning from Germany, Voltaire 

purchased an estate at Ferney, in the free 

republic of Geneva, just across the French 

line. Here he built a home and entered 

146 



VOLTAIRE 

upon a new life, as farmer on a large scale. 
The Calvinists of Geneva did not seriously 
disturb his repose, and he was safe from 
arrest by the French police. It was from 
this retreat that he sent forth another of 
his greatest works, the " Essai sur les Moeurs 
et TEsprit des Nations," in which, more than 
in any other production, he embodied his 
so-called " philosophical " views and his ideas 
upon the politics and religions of the past. 
It is very largely concerned with casting 
ridicule on the historical books of the Oid 
Testament and in discrediting Jewish writers 
and the Church fathers. In the light of 
modern investigations, even by the most 
anti-Christian scholars, his arguments appear 
superficial and childish. In fact, he was 
wont to produce his effects, not by argu- 
ment at all, but by mere assertion. It is 
astonishing that he could ever have been 
regarded as a serious biblical critic. 

It is difficult to make a chronological sur- 
vey of Voltaire's works, because he wrought 
at many things simultaneously, holding nu- 
merous unfinished pieces in hand for a long 
time, often publishing anonymously and sur- 
reptitiously, and revising thoroughly his suc- 
cessive editions. During his life at Ferney 
147 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

he was especially active. He was writing 
thousands of letters, both private and open ; 
he was publishing poetry, mostly satirical, 
but occasionally more earnest, as his famous 
verses on the Lisbon earthquake, which are 
perhaps the only real poetry he ever made ; 
he was turning out a play nearly every year 
and having them performed at his chateau, 
thereby exciting the disapprobation of his 
Calvinist neighbors; he was sending off ar- 
ticles for the Encyclopedic of D'Alembert 
and Diderot; he was printing essays on all 
sorts of subjects, — literary, legal, and theo- 
logical; he wrote several novels and many 
short stories. 

In March, 1762, there came to him at 
Ferney a traveller from the south of France. 
This person related a story which, if true, 
would be ample justification for the hatred 
Voltaire had all his life been pouring forth 
against the Church, and an opportunity for a 
fresh campaign against that spirit of bigotry 
which he now always termed, in accents fierce 
and shrill, The Infamous Thing. A young 
man belonging to a Protestant family named 
Calas, of Toulouse, joined the Catholic 
Church. Shortly afterwards the dead body 
of one of his brothers was found hanging 
148 



VOLTAIRE 

from a rafter in his father's shop. The aged 
father and other members of the household 
were charged with having murdered him to 
prevent his renouncing the Protestant faith. 
Several Catholic societies of Toulouse were 
active in stirring up persecution on this charge. 
There was absolutely no evidence against the 
Calas family, and an impartial court would 
have had no difficulty in perceiving that it 
was a case of suicide. But the court of 
Toulouse was far from impartial, and, more- 
over, was pushed to extremes by a popular 
wave of fanaticism. A barbarous sentence 
was passed upon the unfortunate family. 
Jean Calas, the father, was put to death by 
torture. His property was confiscated. His 
wife and children and a servant, after vary- 
ing terms of imprisonment, were turned out 
to starve. 

The effect of such a story upon Voltaire 
can be imagined. He was stirred at once to 
active and practical measures. He learned 
that one of the Calas boys had taken refuge 
in Geneva. He received him into his own 
house, took upon himself the support of 
the widow and other children, dropped his 
farming and building and poetry, and, 
having ascertained the truth of the matter, 
149 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

gave himself up wholly to obtaining redress. 
Pamphlet upon pamphlet, letter upon letter, 
did he write in behalf of this afflicted family. 
In response to his appeal contributions be- 
gan to arrive from all parts of Europe, and 
with this money and his own fortune he was 
enabled to enter suit before the supreme court 
at Paris for a reversal of the decision of the 
court of Toulouse. Reversal would involve 
the clearing of all taint from the name of the 
father and the restoration of their property 
to his heirs. The Church party made a strong 
fight. The government was interested in 
proving the integrity of its judges and the 
judicial system. Voltaire was shrewd enough 
to win the sympathy of the king's mistress 
and of her favorite. Pressure was brought to 
bear by nearly all the literary men in France 
and throughout Europe. The result was vic- 
tory for the cause of justice. In 1765, three 
years after the condemnation of Jean Calas, 
it was revoked and his character vindicated. 
His family were restored to their rights. Nor 
was this all. The judges of the Paris court 
petitioned the king to reimburse the mem- 
bers of the Calas family for their losses and 
expenses, and the prayer was granted. 

Few events in the eighteenth century made 
1 S° 



VOLTAIRE 

a greater stir or had more influence upon the 
intellectual development of the world. Vol- 
taire was the hero of the hour, and deserved 
the praise which was showered upon him 
from the uttermost parts of the earth. If he 
had done no other good thing in his life, his 
disinterested and generous conduct in this 
affair, and the immense energy and ability he 
bestowed upon it, would be enough to make 
him famous, and it is not merely charitable, 
but just, to let his magnanimity on this occa- 
sion cover a multitude of mean and petty 
actions. An account of the Calas affair, 
including some of Voltaire's pamphlets in 
the case, is printed among his works with 
the title " Essai sur la Tolerance/* The Calas 
affair was not the only occasion on which 
Voltaire rescued innocent persons from the 
clutches of the law, but it may serve as a 
specimen of the others. 

The closing years of Voltaire's life saw no 
diminution of his literary activity. As his 
position in the world's esteem was more 
secure, he was more outspoken. His con- 
tributions to literary criticism during this 
time were enormous. His polemical work 
was even more voluminous. Nor was there 
any falling off in vigor. The vivacity of 
*5* 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

youth, his almost preternatural cleverness, 
were not diminished. The record of his 
old age is darkened, however, by a tricky 
endeavor to obtain formal reconciliation with 
Rome. Through the basest deception and 
bribery he received absolution from a venal 
priest, and was permitted to partake of a 
communion at which his heart mocked. He 
built a church on his estate at Ferney, over 
whose door he had the impudence to inscribe, 
"Deo erexit Voltaire." Many conjectures 
have been made as to the cause of this be- 
havior, so cynical, or else so inconsistent. 
The most probable opinion is that his chief 
motive was fear of being buried as an out- 
cast, in unconsecrated ground. 

Voltaire lived long enough to see much 
sturdy growth from the seed he had sown, 
though not all the fruit was ripe, some of it 
very bitter and some sweet. From about 
1765 to 1778, the year of his death, he was 
an idol in the eyes of a large number of 
Frenchmen, and acknowledged by all parties, 
except the rigidly orthodox, as an ornament 
of the nation. In court circles particularly 
his ideas had found singular acceptation. 
Even foreign princes, even the Empress of 
Russia, were his admirers. All these saw 
*5 2 



VOLTAIRE 

in him, not merely the greatest literary cel- 
ebrity of France, but a successful, a renowned, 
a glorious champion in the war for free- 
dom of thought. In other words, they wor- 
shipped in Voltaire, some consciously and 
others unconsciously, the spirit of the Revolu- 
tion. The Revolution had been making prog- 
ress since 171 5. The year of the Bastille was 
close at hand. But in 1778, at the age of 
eighty-four, Voltaire imprudently visited Paris, 
and the fierce and fickle city, which he had with 
good reason feared all his lifetime, now killed 
him with kindness. Multitudes waited there to 
do him honor. From the king to the market- 
women, all Paris was stirred with pleasure. 
The street before his door was filled with 
crowds acclaiming the defender of the inno- 
cent, the champion of liberty, the enemy of 
superstition, the great national man of letters. 
He attended the theatre to oversee the re- 
hearsals of one of his plays, at the public 
performance of which a grand ovation was 
expected. The French Academy gave him a 
solemn reception. He was overwhelmed with 
visits from distinguished persons, among them 
Benjamin Franklin. At the height of his 
glory, worn out with fatigue and excitement, 
he broke down and died. It is worth remark- 
J 53 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

ing that, by a continuation of his own trickery, 
his friends managed to smuggle his body (for 
he had again broken with Rome) into con- 
secrated ground at an abbey not far from 
Paris. In the wild days of 179 1 it was brought 
back and interred in the Pantheon. 

In what category or categories do we find 
this man, so active, so untiring, so manifold 
in his expression of himself? He touched 
life at a thousand points, and impressed the 
stamp of his personality upon the world's 
soft wax. And, on the other hand, he was 
susceptible to the world's most subtle touch, 
and the lines of his character were graven 
by the spirit of the time. If he set his seal 
deep on the common mind of man, the motto 
of the seal, you will discover, is some formula 
or maxim worked out unconsciously by the 
world at large, and merely reaching fixed 
expression in his vivid intelligence. He lived 
eighty-four years, and was, the chief part of 
that time, the intellectual representative of a 
great nation, and more than that, of a large 
class in all nations. His name brings in- 
stantly to mind his century. We never say 
" Voltaire " without thinking of the eighteenth 
century, which he epitomized. No French- 
man of his time had so great fame as he 
*54 



VOLTAIRE 

in foreign countries, or was so generally 
esteemed by his countrymen. The world 
was divided then, and is still divided, in its 
opinion of his usefulness. To some he is a 
demon incarnate, the arch-enemy of Christi- 
anity and of all spiritual beauty and spiritual 
power ; to others, the apostle of Truth. But 
none deny his vast and varied influence. It 
is with him as with Napoleon. Whether we 
love or hate him, we cannot be indifferent. 
Whether we curse his destructive meddling 
w r ith what we hold dear, or applaud the 
beneficent changes he effected in the map 
of human thought, we must acknowledge 
him a mighty force. And to force, the 
force of boundless ambition, endless activity, 
irresistible genius, w T e must all bow, whether 
willingly or not What was this man? For 
what precisely does he stand? Was he a 
philosopher? Certainly it was as a philos- 
opher that his followers worshipped him, as 
a philosopher that the next generation after 
his knew him. And the eighteenth century 
is distinguished for its philosophy. But here 
we must be definite. It is not French phi- 
losophy for which that age is distinguished, 
but German philosophy, the deep, far-reach- 
ing speculations of Kant, not the popular 
'55 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

commonplaces of the Encyclopedists. They 
were mere critics, and superficial critics too, 
of the mediaeval scholasticism by which the 
Roman Catholic faith was supposed to be 
buttressed; but they were not sound scholars 
in either ancient or modern metaphysics, in 
either Plato or Spinoza. They evolved no 
system; they invented no dialectic; they 
revealed no secret of the mind; they dis- 
covered no unknown law of the universe. To 
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Pascal, and Locke 
they stand related somewhat as the music 
critics of our newspapers and reviews stand 
related to Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner. 
And Voltaire is no more a philosopher than 
the other Encyclopedists. They were called 
philosophers, and by some writers the assault 
they made on ancient beliefs is termed 
the philosophical movement; but these ex- 
pressions are proper only if we mean that 
they were advocates of philosophic doubt 
limited by deism, a formula of life which 
they neither originated nor embellished. 

Perhaps we should think of Voltaire chiefly 
as a political reformer. If so, there must be 
definite and systematic attempts at political 
leadership to which we can point, or at least 
some divination on his part of the dangers 



VOLTAIRE 

and opportunities ahead. But we discover 
no such ambition and no such prophetic gift. 
Himself immensely rich and steadily advanc- 
ing in favor with that noble class whose 
scornful patronage had been at once the 
delight and the agony of his youth, he was 
never, in spite of all his difficulties with the 
government, in a position to appreciate the 
helplessness of those who were really op- 
pressed. His aspirations were aristocratic. 
On the threshold of manhood he assumed 
the high-sounding name, de Voltaire, and 
wrote for the amusement of the grandees 
who condescended to know him. In middle 
age he was the friend and guest of a king. 
In old age he built himself a chateau and 
posed as a country gentleman. Political 
outrages were common during the reign of 
Louis XV., but Voltaire preferred to take 
the part rather of men who were perse- 
cuted in the name of religion. There are 
few if any passages in his works which 
show him to have been conscious of the 
incurable corruption of the government. 
Moreover, he was not a republican at heart 
or by profession. Like Montesquieu, he was 
disposed rather toward limited monarchy. 
But despotism itself suited him fairly well 
i57 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

when he was enjoying its favors. The griev- 
ances of the poor he could regard with 
complacency, except when religious bigotry 
was concerned in their oppression. A polit- 
ical reformer would have been more zealous, 
more sad, perhaps more angry, and espe- 
cially better able to discern the signs of the 
times. There is nothing in Voltaire's writ- 
ings, so far as I know, to indicate that he 
even hoped for what was to happen only 
eleven years after his death. 

So then neither as philosopher nor politi- 
cal reformer is Voltaire chiefly distinguished. 
If we could have seen him in Paris, in 1778, 
at the theatre, superintending the actors who 
were bringing out his last drama, we should 
have little trouble in determining what title 
the great man himself most craved. He then, 
as always, in childhood, youth, and maturer 
years, regarded himself primarily as a poet, 
as a contestant for a seat with Corneille and 
Racine among the creators of high tragedy. 
No one who has read many of his letters can 
fail to be convinced of this. And he very 
cunningly sought to elevate himself by pull- 
ing Corneille down, in a laborious commentary 
on that great author, in which he points out 
all his faults, including with them many of 

158 



VOLTAIRE 

his good, but unconventional, expressions. 
The commentary on Corneille is a marvel 
of stupid and jealous criticism. It serves 
to show whither Voltaire aspired. While 
Europe was ringing with applause for his 
book on England, for his life of Charles 
XII., for his " Siecle de Louis XIV.," for 
his " Essai stir les Moeurs," it is plain that 
Voltaire's ambition was by no means satis- 
fied with these plaudits, and that the praise 
which touched him most was praise for his 
verse. 

And if we had asked him in 1778 what 
title he thought he had won besides the title 
of poet, and prized next to that, he would 
have turned to the bundles of complimentary 
letters that came with every post, and to the 
approving cries of the multitude that stood 
outside his door cheering the benefactor of 
the Calas family and of other persons whom 
he had saved from Jesuit persecutions, and 
would have replied, " Next to the name of 
poet, I crave most the name of liberator of 
the human mind." 

Does he deserve either or both of these 

titles? Can we at last give him unqualified 

praise for something, having denied so many 

claims in his favor. Honesty demands an 

*59 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

admission that no foreigner is altogether 
competent to judge of French poetry. It is 
best, therefore, to submit to the judgment of 
the most excellent French critics in this de- 
cision. And the most excellent French crit- 
ics place Voltaire very high — surprisingly 
high, I was about to say — as a tragic poet, 
next indeed to Corneille and Racine. They, 
moreover, rank his narrative and other verse 
considerably higher, as compared with other 
French poetry, than we are accustomed to 
rank the works of Pope in English poetry. 

But to my mind the happiest word that 
has been applied to Voltaire in respect to his 
purely literary career is the word of Matthew 
Arnold, who called him a great man of letters. 
Voltaire, the poet, — that is not enough, for 
he was a great historian, struck out into a 
new path in history, taught his successors 
that history should deal with peoples, not 
alone with kings, with the development of 
institutions and the birth of ideas, as well as 
with wars and dynasties. His " Charles XII." 
and his " Siecle de Louis XIV." are notable, 
moreover, not merely for the new methods 
they inculcate, but because they are them- 
selves valuable. They are clear, interesting, 
educative, full of ideas, and in the main ac- 
160 



VOLTAIRE 

curate. But Voltaire was a great man of 
letters, not merely as poet and as historian, 
but also as pamphleteer, as novelist, as critic, 
as letter-writer. Voltaire a great man of 
letters ! Here at last we have a phrase com- 
prehensive enough to include all his various 
literary achievements. And it implies, in the 
sense in which Arnold used it, praise of a 
very high order, for he was speaking of the 
rare men, like Cicero, who are the deposito- 
ries of a whole nation's culture, and who write 
with supreme ease on many and great sub- 
jects. It is natural that prose should be the 
chief instrument of such men, for it lends it- 
self to so many kinds of literary production. 
But Voltaire used both prose and verse. 
Goethe is the great man of letters among the 
Germans, and indeed a much greater man of 
letters than Voltaire ; for Goethe, with no less 
range and force, possessed a tenderness, a 
depth, an insight which were not in Voltaire's 
nature. Cicero, the orator and jurist, the 
critic, the philosopher, the elegant correspond- 
ent, is a closer parallel to the great French- 
man. In English literature, with all ur 
wealth of poets, essayists, and novelist' we 
have no one name which suggest such 
combinations of versatility and pjwer as 
ii 161 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

the names of Cicero, Goethe, and Voltaire 
suggest. 

A common characteristic of these great 
men of letters is the infallible perfection of 
their style. No matter what they deal with, 
the touch is sure, familiar, easy. We feel that 
they are at home in all they attempt. They 
breathe freely in the atmosphere of thought. 
They are vividly interested in all things, — 
in physical science, divine speculation, human 
life. Art and history allure them. At one 
time they yield to the spell of imagination ; 
again they are the servants of solid fact. 
But under whatever influence they write, their 
utterance is large and noble. Words are their 
natural acts. Their style is always perfect. 
It is always personal, yet always universal. 
A page of Cicero, of Goethe, of Voltaire, is 
always unmistakably Cicero's, Goethe's, or 
Voltaire's. They had no need to sign their 
letters or put their names at the head of 
their works. Their styles are as individual as 
human voices are. And they are also uni- 
versal. Cicero's Latin is the type of classical 
Latin. It has no solecisms, no provincialisms. 
Goethe's German ranges all the way from the 
homely diction of the peasant to the refined 
speech of Weimar's court. The French of 
162 



VOLTAIRE 

Voltaire is limpid and sparkling as a moun- 
tain brook. It is a language which the Cru- 
saders, were they alive, could understand, and 
which will still be fresh and modern a thou- 
sand years hence. It has no dark places. 
Foreigners find it the easiest French to read. 
As some one says, it contains no wrinkles. 

And the other claim we supposed Voltaire 
making, a moment ago, the claim that he 
was a liberator of the human mind — can 
that be substantiated? Yes, and amply. He 
was, as we have seen, no iconoclast in poli- 
tics, — at least not consciously. It was 
against religious oppression that he aimed 
his shafts. However, the State religion was 
an essential part of the government. He 
could not strike one without injuring the 
other. By imparting to the people some- 
what of his sceptical temper, he more than 
any other man put in play the disintegrating 
forces which were destined to break up the 
old absolutism. His cleverly masked free- 
dom of speech was a weapon which more 
indignant spirits snatched from his hands 
and used with fearful effect. But it was 
from superstition especially that he liberated 
the nation. He thought he was destroying 
Christianity itself. He was not a Christian. 
163 



THE REVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS 

He did not understand Christianity. He 
hated the false thing that passed for Chris- 
tianity in France. And he lived to see it 
shrink before his blows. He lived indeed to 
see, among the educated classes, almost a 
tabula rasa y so far as religion was concerned. 
But here the whirligig of time has brought 
in a strange revenge. The Christian relig- 
ion is to-day so much more solidly rooted 
in society, so much more respected, because 
more effective, that even the terrible Voltaire 
is not regarded entirely as an enemy. Chris- 
tians can even afford to give him some credit 
for the wonderful change. His criticisms 
forced the defenders of religion to abandon 
the unnecessary outworks which they had 
been holding at frightful cost. His criticisms 
did still more: they compelled Christians to 
take to offensive tactics and give up the old 
policy of fighting behind ancient ramparts 
of logic and metaphysics. It is by active, 
aggressive, Christ-like beneficence that the 
new positions of the Church universal have 
been reached. Schools, charities, home and 
foreign missions, and above all a consecrated 
clergy and a purified society — these are the 
response forced from the Church by the rak- 
ing fire of eighteenth-century criticism. As a 
164 



VOLTAIRE 

liberator of the human mind, therefore, Vol- 
taire's work was very great, although the 
outcome would have astonished him. His 
mordant satire has probably ceased to have 
any direct influence. His arguments and 
sneers are like old-fashioned fire-arms in a 
museum. We perceive now his lack of 
erudition, both linguistic and historical. We 
also perceive now his most lamentable defi- 
ciency, namely, that he had no personal ex- 
perience of what religion can do for a man. 
He was blind to the very truth he liberated 
from error. He was insensible to all that is 
most touching and most convincing in the 
life of Christ and of His Church. Yet he 
did more than any other man of his time to 
restore the Church to her true position, for 
he was indeed a liberator of the human 
mind. 



*6 5 



VICTOR HUGO 



167 



VICTOR HUGO 

THOSE who admire force and those who ad- 
mire strength will never have done disputing 
over the value of Victor Hugo's work. To 
the former, more easily impressed by abun- 
dance, variety, and vigor, he is nothing short 
of godlike. To the latter, whom perfection 
allures more than power compels, and who 
know that restraint is an essential quality 
in perfect art, he is not necessarily and ob- 
viously " the greatest poet of our age." He 
has fared ill with some of the best French 
critics, and even the popular voice in France 
is not so loud in his favor as it was fifteen or 
twenty years ago. Yet for us foreigners, who 
are often a considerable distance behind the 
times in our opinions of French writers, and 
slow to change our minds about them, the 
name of Victor Hugo still stands out more 
prominently than any other as representing 
the intellectual life of France since the fall 
of Napoleon. Even the defects of his char- 
acter are by many of us considered typically 
169 



VICTOR HUGO 

French. We see him absurdly conceited, ex- 
cessively patriotic, a too voluminous producer 
of very varied works ; and it is not unusual 
to believe him all the more French for these 
peculiarities. This, of course, is doubly un- 
just, — to Hugo, because the popular idea 
exaggerates a few temperamental excesses 
into huge and ridiculous deformities ; to the 
French, because it is implied that they are 
lacking in the qualities of poise and good 
sense. 

It must be a very superficial reader to 
whom French literature can appear to be in 
the main frivolous or eccentric. Dignity is 
not necessarily severe. It cannot be heavy ; 
indeed, grace is of its essence. And dignity 
is the note of French literature in the seven- 
teenth century, its Augustan age. To say 
that seriousness is the note of the eighteenth- 
century literature in France may sound less 
axiomatic, but I think it is even more true. 
No men are more serious than those who 
believe it to be their mission to revolutionize 
and reform society. We may not now take 
Diderot and Voltaire and Rousseau as seri- 
ously as they took themselves; but that is 
partly because their purposes have been to a 
large extent achieved, and the result is an 
170 



VICTOR HUGO 

old story to us. The note of the nineteenth 
century in French literature is harder to catch, 
perhaps cannot be caught ; for the voices are 
many, and we are too near the stage. But 
if anything is evident it is that this era is 
marked by severe and conscientious industry. 
Criticism has been developed into an almost 
perfect instrument for quick, sure testing 
of literary claims. A perverse book may 
through neglect, through its insignificance, 
or indeed through its very absurdity, find a 
large number of gentle readers in England or 
America. In France less favor would be 
shown it. The artistic sense is more widely 
diffused there; life centres in Paris, where 
values can be readily compared ; and, above 
all, the custom of personal journalism pre- 
vails in France. A man is not going to 
waste his time in reading a new book if 
the critic most competent to judge condemns 
it over his own signature in the morning 
paper. And if a new book is so insignifi- 
cant that no critic reviews it, the condem- 
nation of silence is even more annihilating. 
Then, too, the competition for literary honors 
is intense. The rewards are greater than in 
any other country : a seat in the Academy ; 
a professor's chair in the College de France ; 
171 



VICTOR HUGO 

an office of dignity and pecuniary value under 
government; the knowledge that a success- 
ful French book will sell from St. Petersburg 
to Madrid, and from Amsterdam to Constanti- 
nople — all over the world, in fact; for in nearly 
every country people read two languages — 
their own and French. In this competition 
it may not always be the best written books 
that come to the front; but the chance of 
their doing so is immensely greater than 
elsewhere. And another beneficial result is 
the careful toil bestowed upon the prepara- 
tion of books, the training to which authors 
subject themselves, the style and finish, the 
lopping off of eccentricities and crudities, the 
infinite pains, in short, which a writer will 
take when he knows that his fate depends on 
his pleasing, first of all, a select and culti- 
vated audience of connoisseurs. No journey- 
man work will do. 

It was by such a tribunal that Victor Hugo 
was judged, long before his name was known 
outside of France. And yet, although the 
popular voice has been immensely favor- 
able to him for two generations, this high 
court of criticism has not decided the case. 
The position of Victor Hugo is by no means 
definitely established, as Alfred de Mussels 
172 



VICTOR HUGO 

is established, and Balzac's. But, whatever 
be the verdict, Victor Hugo, because of the 
power and quantity of his work, and his long 
and conspicuous life, certainly is the most 
imposing figure of this century in French 
literature. 

It is often a questionable proceeding to 
make one man's life and works interpret for 
us the doings of his contemporaries, to try to 
find in one term the expression for a whole 
series of events. It is the most convenient 
method, to be sure, but not always the most 
fruitful or trustworthy. When, therefore, I 
remembered that Victor Hugo entered into 
prominence only a little after the beginning 
of our century, and that although dead he yet 
speaks, for the definitive edition of his works 
is not completed, and every year adds new 
volumes of posthumous books to that enor- 
mous succession ; when I perceived how con- 
venient it would be to make him the central 
and distributive figure of this whole epoch 
in French literary history, — I regarded the 
chronological coincidence rather as a tempta- 
tion than as a help, and resolved not to yield 
to the solicitations of a mere facile arrange- 
ment. For I had no great belief in Victor 
Hugo's fitness to be called the representative 
i73 



VICTOR HUGO 

and interpreter of his age. I was under the in- 
fluence of the prevailing Anglo-Saxon opin- 
ion of him as an egoist, whom even the 
impulsions of his mighty genius could not 
break loose from absorbed contemplation of 
self. 

Lowell expressed this opinion when he 
said : *' In proportion as solitude and com- 
munion with self lead the sentimentalist to 
exaggerate the importance of his own per- 
sonality, he comes to think that the least 
event connected with it is of consequence 
to his fellow-men. If he change his -shirt, 
he would have mankind aware of it. Victor 
Hugo, the greatest living representative of 
the class, "considers it necessary to let the 
world know by letter from time to time 
his opinions on every conceivable subject 
about which it is not asked nor is of the 
least value unless we concede to him an 
immediate inspiration." 

Let us take another of these estimates, 
which might well deter one from considering 
Hugo as capable of representing any body 
of men or any mass of life. I quote Mr. 
W. E. Henley, in " Views and Reviews," a 
little volume of paradoxical challenges, which 
he calls " appreciations : " " All his life long 
174 



VICTOR HUGO 

he was addicted to attitude; all his life long 
he was a poseur of the purest water. He 
seems to have considered the affectation of 
superiority an essential quality in art; for 
just as the cock in Mrs. Poyser's Apothegm 
believed that the sun got up to hear him 
crow, so to the poet of the 'Legende* and 
the ' Contemplations/ it must have seemed 
as if the human race existed but to consider 
the use he made of his ' oracular tongue.' " 

These are but two of the many expressions 
of disgust anybody may encounter in reading 
English or American criticism of Victor Hugo. 
But not discouraged by such estimates, and 
fortifying myself rather with the thought of 
how the French themselves esteem? him, I 
began to read Victor Hugo again with a view 
of determining whether or not he could be 
accepted as the unifying representative, the 
continuous interpreter, of French literature 
since the fall of Napoleon. And as a result 
I can say that, for me, this one man's life and 
works formulate nearly all the phenomena of 
French literary history from the battle of 
Waterloo down to the present day. Except 
comedy and the realistic novel, he has excelled 
in every kind of literature which the French 
have cultivated during this century. With 
*7S 



VICTOR HUGO 

these two notable exceptions, he has been 
a champion, a precursor, what the Germans 
call a Vorfechter, in every great literary 
movement. 

Nothing more deplorable can be conceived 
than the intellectual condition of France 
under the First Empire. The fine ideals of 
the young republic were a laughing-stock, a 
butt of saddest ridicule. For there is nothing 
men hate so much as the thought of a pure 
ideal they have once cherished and since 
shrunk away from; and the remembrance of 
a lost opportunity to be one's true self is the 
bitterest of griefs; and no reproach stings 
deeper than this, of a former and nobler state 
of conscience which was not obeyed. Liberty 
was borne down under a weight of circum- 
stance all the more oppressive because it was 
thought that the new order of things was the 
natural product of the Revolution; and indeed 
it looked so. Literature was bidden to flourish 
by the despot. He posed as a protector of 
the arts, and at his command the seventeenth 
century was to begin again and a new Cor- 
neille, a new Boileau, a new Moliere, were to 
adorn his reign. But he who conquered Italy 
could not compel unwilling Minerva, and 
the victor of the Pyramids could not re-ani- 
176 



VICTOR HUGO 

mate a dead past. The writings of the period 
1800-1815, indeed the whole intellectual life 
of that time, its art, its music, its literature, 
its philosophy, are what might have been ex- 
pected. 

After the downfall of Napoleon, what intel- 
lectual ideals remained for France? With 
what equipment of thoughts and moral forces 
did she set out at the beginning of this new 
epoch? With no equipment that was at all 
adequate for solving the staggering problems 
set for her to solve. Just think of them ! 
She had to deal with monarchy and a state 
church all over again. She had to decide 
between the spirit of the old regime and the 
spirit of '89. There was a contradiction in 
her past, and she had to turn her back on one 
or the other fascinating period in her history 
— either on Louis Quatorze and the grand 
sihle with all its glory of treasured acquire- 
ment, its shining names, its illustrious and 
venerable institutions, or on the less attractive 
men and measures and purposes of the Revo- 
lution; and these latter, though apparently 
less worthy of proud contemplation, impressed 
the conscience and the political sense as 
being the things fullest of life for the dawning 
future. The most loyal conservative must 
12 i 77 



VICTOR HUGO 

have felt an awkward consciousness that the 
things he hated would in the end prevail. 

Such, then, was the intellectual condition 
of France in 1815 — uncertainty and division 
and dearth of ideals and purposes, in the face 
of a future full of perplexing problems. But 
she was strangely hopeful. She has never 
been otherwise. The French are the most 
elastic people in Europe, and no defeat has 
ever discouraged them. And she was in love 
with herself as much as ever, and as fully 
convinced of her right to the leading place 
among all nations. Indeed it did not occur 
to her that she had ever surrendered that 
right. 

What have been the principal lines of 
movement in French literature since 181 5? 
In 1 81 5 there were three men prominent 
in French letters and life: Chateaubriand, 
Lamartine, and Lamennais. Victor Hugo 
was born in 1802, and by 18 17 he had become 
a literary man, not by intention merely, but 
by writing. He came upon the scene, there- 
fore, when these three men were at the height 
of their activity ; for Chateaubriand was born 
in 1768, Lamartine in 1790, and Lamennais 
in 1782; and they, appreciating the need of 
leadership in France under the newly restored 
178 



VICTOR HUGO 

monarchy, had thrown themselves enthusias- 
tically into the work of instructing the people. 
Let us inquire who they were and what was 
the nature of their activity ; or, in other words, 
what was the first public literary atmosphere 
that surrounded Victor Hugo. 

Chateaubriand at the age of seventeen was 
a captain of cavalry under Louis XVI. When 
the Revolution broke out he came to America 
on a royal commission to find the northwest 
passage. He brought letters of introduction 
to the chief personages of the new world, and 
was much impressed with the simple and 
gracious reception given him by Washington, 
and with his unpretentious mode of life. 
After the failure of his geographical re- 
searches, the young officer plunged into the 
forest and started alone, on foot, for the 
southwest, his head full of romantic ideas 
about the beauty of primitive civilization, or 
absence of civilization, put there no doubt by 
Jean Jacques Rousseau, of whom he was an 
ardent admirer and a disciple. Chateau- 
briand's American itinerary has never been 
clear. Doubts have often been expressed 
as to whether he really saw as much of the 
country as he declared he did; and it has 
been proved recently that, with the best means 
179 



VICTOR HUGO 

of transportation then existing, he could not 
possibly have visited all the places he pro- 
fessed to have seen on this continent. How- 
ever, there is nothing for it but to follow 
his own highly colored narration. We are 
told that one evening in an Indian wigwam 
he discovered a torn page of an English 
newspaper, and read of the ravages of the 
Revolution and the flight and arrest of 
Louis XVI. His loyalty was awakened, and 
after months of sentimental wanderings in the 
forests of the Mississippi valley, he returned 
to France and enlisted with the Royalists. 
They received him with suspicion, and even 
after his recovery, in exile, from a severe 
wound received in their cause, they refused 
him fellowship. He lived in London and 
Belgium and the island of Jersey, composing 
his first work, an " Essai sur les Revolutions/' 
1797, in which his ideas, both of politics and 
of religion, are still in a line with those of 
Rousseau. Shortly after its publication some 
inward experience of the reality of life and its 
dependence upon God gave him an impulsion 
in a new direction, and he began his great 
apology for the Christian faith, entitled, " Le 
Genie du Christianisme," 1802, of which 
" Atala " and " Rene " are only episodes. At 
180 



VICTOR HUGO 

this time Napoleon was re-establishing order, 
and as he considered religion necessary to 
political security, and was just then courting 
the Pope, he showered favors upon the young 
author, to the latter's manifest harm, for they 
made him fickle and ambitious, and turned 
his natural sentimentality into the most 
pronounced egoism. His masterpiece was 
" Les Martyrs,' V a sort of Christian epic in 
prose which appeared in 1809; and there- 
after he was regarded as the leader in a con- 
servative reaction back to Rome and back to 
royalty. 

^ Lamartine was a writer of greater signifi- 
cance, though in his early years he stood in 
a secondary place, owing to Chateaubriand's 
influence with the clerical and royalist party, 
and indeed with all those who longed for 
peace and a revival of religious faith in 
France. His early life was as interesting as 
Chateaubriand's, and, like his, its years of 
transition from boyhood to active manhood 
were spent in foreign lands. His poetry is 
characterized by a certain softness and sweet- 
ness peculiar to itself, reminding one some- 
what of English Cowper. i It is contemplative 
and religious. Lamartine succeeded in being 
a guide to his people in so far as he attracted 
181 



VICTOR HUGO 

them by his beautiful verse to a more serious 
contemplation of themselves and the world, 
to a renewed interest in true religion, to an 
appreciation of the fact that Christianity 
was still alive and capable of inspiring enthu- 
siasm. The feeling had prevailed in France 
that vital Christianity was incompatible with 
the cultivation of the fine arts. Lamartine 
proved this to be untrue. J^Apart from all 
question of the intrinsic merit of his work, 
his tendency was, like that of Chateaubriand, 
in the direction of recognizing religion and 
looking back to monarchical rather than re- 
publican France for inspiration and example/ 
Felicit6 de Lamennais lived a life whose 
details belong as much to the history of phi- 
losophy, or to ecclesiastical history, as to 
that of belles-lettres. First a priest, and the 
most ardent Catholic in France, he afterward 
turned against Rome and led a movement to- 
wards religious independence. There are few 
more interesting figures, chiefly because great 
religious leaders have been so rare in modern 
France. At the time when Victor Hugo was 
beginning to write, Lamennais was ardently 
engaged in an effort to establish the suprem- 
acy of Rome, not only over private con- 
science, but over political institutions, and 
182 



VICTOR HUGO 

although from his subsequent actions he is 
known to the world as a liberal and a heretic, 
yet at that time, having published in 1 8 17 
his " Essai sur lTndifference en Matiere de 
Religion, " he was the most jealous conserva- 
tive and the most fiery churchman in France. 

Thus a superficial glance has sufficed to 
show that the first movement which stirred 
literary France after 181 5 was a reaction 
in favor of monarchy and Rome; that its 
champions were Chateaubriand, Lamartine, 
and Lamennais; that its effort was mainly 
through poetry and poetical prose; that its 
title to honor was its high political and moral 
purity; that its defect was its sentimentality; 
that its ultimate inefficacy was due to its run- 
ning counter to the tendency of the age. 
Into this movement Victor Hugo inevitably 
fell; by it he was for a long time carried; 
with it he at first kept step bravely. 

At this point let us take a glance at Victor ' 
Hugo's early life. He was born in 1802, of 
respectable and educated parents. His father 
was an army officer of increasing distinction 
under the Empire ; his mother a sympathizer 
with the exiled Bourbons. During Victor's 
early childhood he, with his mother and 
brothers, moved about through Italy, follow- 
183 



VICTOR HUGO 

ing his father's campaignings under Joseph 
Bonaparte; but when the boys were old 
enough to attend school their mother took 
them to Paris, while the father fought through 
a guerilla war against the brigands headed 
by Fra Diavolo. After several years of tran- 
quillity in France, Madame Hugo and her 
sons were again called to follow the fortunes 
of the head of the family, this time in Spain. 
The father won a generalship in the French 
army in that conquered country, and became 
majordomo of the palace at Madrid. The 
boys attended school in a college for noble- 
men's sons, and were badly treated by the 
young Spaniards, who could not forget that 
the French lads were the children of one of 
their conquerors. But after a brief sojourn 
in Spain they returned to Paris, and there the 
poet-life of Victor Hugo began, and began 
in earnest; for during three years, at school 
and at home, he composed verses of all sorts, 
and in 1817, in competition for a prize offered 
by the National Academy, he wrote an ode 
which, although not successful in the contest, 
brought him into public notice. 

The next year he won a prize in the Floral 
Games of Toulouse, with a poem which is 
published among his other works, and which 
184 



VICTOR HUGO 

is one of the most remarkable productions of 
precocious genius known to literary history. 
In 1 82 1 he had his first taste of the bitterness 
of life, and his boyhood came to an abrupt 
termination, in the death of his excellent 
mother. On the same day he became en- 
gaged to a young girl who had for a long 
time been his schoolmate and almost a mem- 
ber of his own home-circle. Her parents 
allowed his suit, but postponed the marriage 
until he should have proved himself capable 
of supporting a family. He set to work with 
feverish ardor and undertook almost every 
kind of literary production — odes, plays, 
novels. The first of his.successes under this 
new stimulus were two remarkable stories, 
" Bug Jargal " and " Han dTslande," stories 
which indicate a strange and exuberant im- 
agination, tropical in its fervor, its singularity, 
its fecundity. 

But it was in 1826, by the publication of 
his " Odes et Ballades/' that he laid the real 
corner-stone of his fame. The king, Louis 
XVIII., liked the poems, for a natural reason, 
as we shall see, and gave their author a pen- 
sion of one thousand francs, which in those 
days, and in economical France, seemed a 
large sum, and the young people were per- 

18s "" 



VICTOR HUGO 

mitted to marry. It will be interesting to 
observe what was the character of the " Odes 
et Ballades." They are almost all political 
and religious, and all thoroughly conserva- 
tive; all in praise of the Bourbons, con- 
demnatory of the Revolution; silent as to 
Napoleon, or nearly so, and glowing with 
devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. 
They remind us of what Wordsworth twenty- 
five years earlier wrote, in a precisely con- 
trary spirit, when he was influenced by the 
hopes inspired by the first events of 1789, 
and before the subsequent outrages changed 
him into a stiff British church-and-state con- 
servative. These early effusions of Hugo 
are noble pieces of versification, and wonder- 
ful enough as the works of a very young 
man ; but they cannot be called poetry of a 
high order, nor do they even give promise of 
what he was to do later, except that towards 
the last we begin to find poems which bid us 
expect great things in the way of style. 

Two years afterward, in 1828, appeared a 
second volume of poems, " Les Orientales," 
a collection of dream-pictures of Eastern life, 
in somewhat the same manner as the efforts 
of Thomas Moore which were popular with 
young ladies of the last generation, but in- 
186 



VICTOR HUGO 

finitely superior to all his " Lalla Rookhs " and 
other impossibilities. The fact is that some 
of Hugo's greatest successes in passionate, 
highly-colored description are to be found in 
this collection. He was a man whose heart 
grew slowly, however, and we look in vain 
as yet for poems which could teach us much 
about life and how to bear it patiently or en- 
joy it nobly. 

But we are now in the midst of the four 
years during which Victor Hugo was chang- 
ing his attitude towards art entirely, 1826- 
1830. Up to this time he had not entered 
specially into the business of criticism, had 
not made theories about writing, but simply 
written, either celebrating his political heroes 
or letting his fancy wander through distant 
lands, which were full of glamour because 
distant. He had gathered about him a circle 
of interesting people ; indeed he was already 
the young king of nearly all the rising liter- 
ary men and women in Paris. It was natural 
that there should be a great deal of discus- 
sion among them about the rules and pro- 
prieties of their art; but Victor Hugo was 
still', in this matter as in every other, a 
conservative. 

In 1827 he surprised this little world of 
187 



VICTOR HUGO 

admirers with a drama, " Cromwell," in the 
preface to which he expounded some ad- 
vanced views in regard to dramatic writing. 
His opinions were debated, and all Paris was 
divided into their supporters and opponents. 
In 1830 appeared " Hernani," which he suc- 
ceeded in having played at the Theatre fran- 
gais, in spite of the opposition of the Academy, 
which saw in it a menace to good literature. 

There are few exciting events in the his- 
tory of literature. It is in the main a record 
of quiet, intellectual lives, a story of thoughts 
and tendencies. The account of a single 
border feud will present a greater number of 
striking incidents than the history of the 
forces which have produced our English 
poetry or Germany's philosophy. And the 
few memorable anecdotes of a concrete char- 
acter which are scattered here and there in 
the chronicles of literature usually attract 
more attention than they deserve. Out of 
ten persons who will tell you that Demos- 
thenes practised oratory by the sea-shore, 
with a pebble in his mouth, not more than 
one has any notion what his orations them- 
selves were about. The man who is most set 
agog by the story of Shakespeare's poaching 
exploit is the least likely to have read his 
188 



VICTOR HUGO 

plays. The same thing might be said of the 
hubbub occasioned by the first representa- 
tion of Victor Hugo's " Hernani," on Feb- 
ruary 25, 1830. There is a temptation to 
make " Hernani " the text of disquisitions 
on Romanticism, forgetting that it is. a drama 
of high intrinsic merit, and that the question 
of positive value is, after all, the essential one. 
Word was passed about among those who 
regarded Hugo's new theories with aversion, 
and a large and mainly hostile audience was 
assembled on that memorable night, the 
most eventful premiere since the first repre- 
sentation of Corneille's " Cid," nearly two 
hundred years before. Everybody knows 
what happened. Everybody knows how 
fashion and aristocracy and journalism com- 
bined to kill the new piece, which was said 
to have been written in defiance of the rules 
followed by Racine and Voltaire; how 
the regular theatre-goers hissed, and were 
howled at in turn by the worshippers of 
novelty, frowsy, long-haired young artists 
and penny-a-liners and students, from the left 
bank of the Seine, who had been brought over 
to support the play, One of the most sacred 
institutions of the French theatre is the 
claque, or body of hired applauders. Now 
189 



VICTOR HUGO 

on this occasion there was no claque, for the 
friends of Victor Hugo had distributed free 
tickets in the Latin Quarter, and their recip- 
ients were present, ready to raise the roof if 
necessary. The hissing and hooting began 
almost with the first line, and continued for 
several hours, until the actors had mouthed 
through the whole tragedy; and yet it was 
considered that " Hernani" had won the day. 
To us such a way of supporting the fine 
arts and defending the canons of literary 
taste, indeed even such widespread and 
frenzied interest in anything except busi- 
ness, sport, politics, and religion, seems, to 
say the least, remarkable. But we must 
remember that the French go to the theatre 
even more than we go to church; that in 
February, 1830, it was not safe to get excited 
about politics in Paris; that athletics were 
neglected in France previous to 1871; and 
that possibly the French might disagree with 
us in our estimate of business as the chief 
end of man. But although we must admire 
the French for this fine capability of theirs, 
— this capability of taking an excited interest 
in the things of the mind, it may seem that 
the critics and historians have made too 
much of that fracas on the 25th of February, 
190 



VICTOR HUGO 

1830, in the Theatre frangais. They tell us 
that this was the first great fight between the 
Romanticists and the Classicists. 

We can learn what these words mean only 
by getting the critics to indicate to us a piece 
of art-work constructed according to the 
Romanticists and another constructed ac- 
cording to the Classicists, and then compar- 
ing them and picking out the essential 
differences. They say " Hernani " is a drama 
of the Romanticists, and that seventeenth- 
century tragedy was classical. We find, 
indeed, that Victor Hugo's drama differs from 
Racine's; " Hernani " is based upon life in 
Spain, and not in Greece or Rome, and the 
period is the sixteenth century, and not the 
age of Pericles or Tiberius Caesar. But if 
this is all, then Corneille was a Romanticist, 
for his first successful tragedy, the " Cid," is 
also a drama of Spanish life, and is set no 
further back than the Middle Ages. But, 
they say, this is not all : " Hernani " is ro- 
mantic because it contains a mingling of the 
comic and the heroic, inasmuch as there are 
in it words and notions of common use, where 
the author might have employed expressions 
and ideas consecrated and set apart wholly 
to the service of poetry. 
191 



VICTOR HUGO 

And this is true. Victor Hugo does use 
both phrases and thoughts that no writer of 
French tragedy had dared to use before. 
And here, rather than anywhere else, do we 
find what we mean when we say he was a 
Romanticist. The terms as applied to French 
literature used to be defined by saying that 
the essence of Classicism was the seeking of 
material in the life of Greece and Rome, and 
that the essence of Romanticism was the 
seeking of material in the life of the Middle 
Ages. A broader definition, however, is this, 
if any be possible : Classicism in literature 
consists in limiting the choice of a writer 
within a certain range of special terms and 
special ideas, these terms and these ideas 
being such as the best authors of the past 
have considered beautiful and appropriate. 
Romanticism is the theory — a more gener- 
ous one — which would permit and encourage 
a writer to look for his material and his terms 
among thoughts and expressions more com- 
mon in everyday experience, with large free- 
dom of choice. In short, Romanticism is 
the recognition of the rights of modernity 
in art. 

The theory of Classicism originated largely 
in Racine. At any rate it is purely French 
192 



VICTOR HUGO 

in origin. The old stupid German Classicism 
which Lessing demolished, the eighteenth- 
century English Classicism which Scott and 
Wordsworth demolished, both had their 
source in France. And in France Racine 
ruled supreme. He built his tragedies after 
a severe pattern, and made them very beau- 
tiful, but wholly artificial. People liked them, 
in that stiff and conventional age, and were 
far enough from investigating whether they 
and the dramas of Sophocles were in truth 
built on the same plan. They took that for 
granted. Henceforth to their minds there 
was only one way of making a tragedy: it 
must not violate the three unities, of time, 
place, and action; it must deal exclusively 
with exalted, heroic, and terrible emotions ; 
it must contain only poetical expressions ; it 
must be composed in Alexandrine couplets, 
with certain minor points of agreement with 
the versification of Racine. In short, a writer 
of tragedy must think like Racine and rhyme 
like Racine, and, above all, he must never 
under any circumstances employ a term or 
indicate an action which might be called 
vulgar. From France the fashion spread all 
over Europe. It affected Italy, even down to 
Alfieri, who at the end of the last century 
J 3 193 



VICTOR HUGO 

was hampered by this spirit of obedience to 
Racine. It made English literature of the 
eighteenth century what it was, and kept it 
from being what it might have been. Her 
acceptance of this theory was one of the rea- 
sons why Germany had no literature of great 
account from the time of Luther and Hans 
Sachs to the day of brave old Lessing, who 
was the first man of consequence to see what 
was the trouble, and to set to work remedying 
it by destructive criticism and constructive 
example. If it is one of the glories of Ger- 
many that Lessing was the sharpest-eyed man 
in Europe and the first person sound enough, 
independent enough, blunt enough, and skil- 
ful enough to change the fashion; to us of 
English speech belongs the pride of saying 
that it was back to Shakespeare's large 
humanity that the reformers turned. 

We have seen that the conservative re- 
action, represented by Chateaubriand, La- 
martine, Lamennais, and Hugo, lasted from 
1815 to about 1830, and that the new spirit 
of Romanticism, which had been working all 
along, finally became dominant then. In 
1828 Sainte-Beuve published his " Tableau 
historique et critique de la poesie frangaise 
et du theatre frangais," for the spirit and 
194 



VICTOR HUGO 

purpose of which, not he alone was respon- 
sible, but other young writers also. It 
breathed a spirit of revolt against the sterile 
rules which for two hundred years had stifled 
lyric poetry in France, and its purpose was 
to revive interest in the pre-classical poetry 
of the sixteenth century, the poetry of Du 
Bellay and Ronsard. Victor Hugo, waver- 
ing between his old and his new positions, 
was a strong influence in the life of Sainte- 
Beuve at this time. Literary innovations 
were numerous in the next two years. As 
usual in France, the political situation was 
closely connected with art-life. The political 
revolution of 1830, often called the Revolu- 
tion of July, dethroned Charles X., and 
brought in, with a more liberal constitution, 
Louis Philippe, a prince of the house of 
Orleans. This event proved to be a great 
stimulus to literary activity and a guarantee 
of literary freedom. It went far towards 
destroying the expectation of reviving a 
state of society and a tone of thought mod- 
elled after seventeenth-century life. It weak- 
ened the monarchical tendency altogether, 
for it divided the hopes of conservatives and 
proved that the Bourbons were not the only 
possible kings of France, but that many 
*95 



VICTOR HUGO 

monarchists would take a king wherever 
they wanted to. As is usual, and not in 
politics merely, but in all combinations of 
human effort where supremacy must be 
maintained by compromise, the unsuccessful 
minority, the hungry opposition, was freer 
from division, more single in aim, and purer 
in method, than the party in power. There 
is sometimes no party tonic like defeat, and 
nothing is so recuperative as retirement for 
a season. By 1830 the republican party had 
been so far purified by inactivity that a 
young poet like Hugo might be attracted 
towards it as to the saving remnant of his 
people. His drift in the direction of repub- 
licanism was hastened by the fact that 
his next two dramas, " Marion De Lorme," 
1831, and "Le Roi s'amuse," 1832, were 
kept from being performed by ministerial 
order, because they displayed^ ffio revered 
kings of France, Louis XIII. and Francis L, 
as shallow, pleasure-loving men. 

A new era for French literature began in 
1830. We are justified in saying this, be- 
cause the great names of the former decade 
had lost their brilliancy, and another set of 
writers had begun to be celebrated and to 
be looked upon as establishing the tone of 
196 



VICTOR HUGO ' 

thought. The character of the product, too, 
is different. There was a larger freedom in 
the choice and treatment of subjects; the 
literatures of England and Germany were 
being studied and translated. For the first 
time, also, was there in France any consider- 
able appreciation of Dante. 

As Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and La- 
mennais set the tone in 1815, so Hugo with 
his friends and others of the same free spirit 
did in 1830. About this powerful, enthu- 
siastic man and his cultivated young wife, 
in their simple home, there gathered a num- 
ber of literary men and women, who were 
called the ctnacle or symposium. They, with 
other persons whom their influence touched, 
had a common tendency, which in the case 
of some was clearly enough defined to be 
called a common conscious purpose. 

They hoped, these brilliant enthusiasts, to 
bring about a new French Revolution, blood- 
less, of the spirit rather than of the form. 
Here are their names : Lamartine (for he had 
gone over to the Romanticists), Victor Hugo, 
Alfred de Musset, Beranger, Alfred de Vigny, 
Balzac, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, 
Sainte-Beuve. Although the original revolt 
was against the dramatic fetters imposed by 
197 



VICTOR HUGO 

Racine and Boileau and Voltaire, the revolu- 
tion had extended over the whole range of 
literature — against conventionality in criti- 
cism, in lyric poetry, in fiction; just as the 
revolt of the American colonies soon got 
far beyond the original grievance about the 
stamp tax. Their common tendency was 
protest against conventionality. They went 
too far under this impulse. Victor Hugo, 
the devout, God-fearing youth, became, for the 
time being, a sentimentalist and skeptic; a 
poet could not do worse, and the effect is 
seen in a marked diminution of creative 
force. He no longer possessed his old 
earnestness, and thus his work of this period 
fails to touch our hearts with fire. The self- 
consciousness of youth, instead of melting 
into that ever-present recognition of the Di- 
vine which is the true culture of a mature 
man, only stiffened into an odious self- 
conceit, which is Victor Hugo's ugliest 
blemish. George Sand advocated and prac- 
tised free-love. B^ranger, the Robert Burns 
of France (but not nearly so great a poet), 
overdid his office of convivial songster. Dumas' 
private life was a long scandal. His lack of 
restraint affected his work, for had he pos- 
sessed more restraint he would have written 
198 



VICTOR HUGO 

fewer books, and they might all have been 
as good as "Les Trois Mousquetaires." 

Alfred de Vigny is a beautiful exception. 
Although he followed Victor Hugo with all the 
ardor of his chivalrous nature, he preserved 
at the same time a measure, a moderation, a 
grace, a consistency, which the coldest Clas- 
sicist might have envied. He was born in 
1799, of a family of soldiers, and tells us he 
learned war at the wounded knees of his 
warrior father. In his early life he was con- 
stantly laying down the pen for the sword. 
While in garrison at Paris he was to be found 
chiefly in the libraries, and it was in camp, in 
the Pyrenees, that he wrote his celebrated 
historical novel, " Cinq Mars." His transla- 
tion of " Othello " was badly received in 
1829. He cultivated English literature as- 
siduously, and drew inspiration from Milton 
— and Ossian. The rhapsodies of the pseudo- 
Ossian were causing a great stir throughout 
Europe, and were eagerly read and applied 
by the Romanticists as a proof of what could 
be done in defiance of the rules of Boileau. 
Alfred de Vigny, too, like almost every nov- 
elist from that day to this, was profoundly 
influenced by Walter Scott. He wrote sev- 
eral original plays, of which the best known 
199 



VICTOR HUGO 

is " Chatterton." But the works from his 
hand which our generation reads most are 
" Cinq Mars " and his lyric poems. 

Alfred de Musset was a poet of such great 
importance that it is impossible to say, in a 
brief sketch like this, anything at all adequate 
about his delicate qualities of heart and mind, 
his strange, sad life, his wonderful achieve- 
ments, and his growing fame. He will live 
perhaps when all his contemporaries are for- 
gotten, except Hugo. 

Balzac, George Sand, and Dumas it is 
hardly necessary to mention in this connec- 
tion : they have the advantage of being read 
more than the poets. The development of 
the novel has been the only concerted move- 
ment of great importance in French litera- 
ture since the early days of Romanticism. 
From Balzac, the father of the realists, Hugo, 
the extreme of idealists, learned little. There 
seems to be absolutely no artistic relation be- 
tween them. George Sand and Dumas were, 
of course, idealists, romantic to the last de- 
gree, and although Hugo in his novels mani- 
festly strains after reality, he is much more 
in line with them than with Balzac. But Hugo 
is not a novelist at all in the sense that Balzac 
or George Sand or Dumas are novelists. He 
200 



VICTOR HUGO 

has written great prose works of imagination, 
" Les Miserables," " Les Travailleurs de la 
Mer," " Notre Dame de Paris;' "Quatre- 
vingt-treize, ,, but the matter in each case is 
essentially poetical. 

Sainte-Beuve passes this severe condemna- 
tion upon all the poetry of himself and his 
friends, at this epoch, saying : " The result of 
this concourse of talent for several years was 
a very rich body of lyric poetry, richer than 
France had dreamed of till then, but very 
unequal and diversified. Most of the poets 
gave themselves up, without restraint, to the 
unbridled instincts of their natures, and also 
to all the pretensions of their pride, and even 
to the biddings of their silly vanity. Good 
and bad qualities sprang up indiscriminately, 
and posterity will have to choose between 
the two. No product of the poets of that 
day will endure in a complete form. ,, 

But Victor Hugo outlived all parties and 
groups and associations of which he was a 
member in that early time, and his life sub- 
sequent to the exciting days of 1830 was a 
steady development, and contains in itself 
a reflection of nearly everything that was 
going on in France. 

We may consider him under three aspects : 
201 



VICTOR HUGO 

as dramatist, novelist, and lyric poet. He 
is greatest under the last aspect. Through 
all his life he expressed himself in song. 
Perhaps no other poet has done this so 
thoroughly, so beautifully, and for so long 
a period. So we may reserve the subject 
of his personality and actual experiences 
until we come to consider his lyric poetry, 
and glance first at his work for the stage and 
I / in prose fiction. 

In 1827 appeared a so-called historical 
drama, " Cromwell/' which was not remark- 
able for much except its lack of historical 
truth, and its preface, in which the young 
man outlined his theories and laid down 
the programme of attack upon the classical 
ideas. This attack was in reality first made 
in force with "Hernani" in 1830. "Marion 
De Lorme," which appeared in 183 1, is a 
much weaker play, and abounds in the ex- 
cesses to which Romanticism was prone. 
Apart from the substance, which is repulsive 
and harrowing, when not trivial, the form of 
the drama is loose, and one can very easily 
understand how such a production would of- 
fend an ear trained to the stately, chaste, and 
elegant dialogue of the elder poets. If this 
is all Romanticism has to offer, let us have 
202 



VICTOR HUGO 

back our Corneille and Racine. "Le Roi 
s'amuse" (1832) suffers from the same faults, 
and offends even more against good taste. 
These pieces are both strong in the main, 
though there are weak passages in both, 
but their strength is not healthy or beauti- 
ful. Victor Hugo himself called attention to 
the fact that he depended for his effect, in 
these two plays, upon the principle of con- 
trast. It is a principle which he has em- 
ployed in nearly all his work too deliberately 
and too exclusively. In kt Le Roi s'amuse," 
for example, he has chosen a most repulsive 
figure, Triboulet, whom he makes hideous 
both externally and internally, by every de- 
vice known to art, and in this character he 
implants a pure flower of paternal love. 
Then he stands off and says : " Behold what 
have I done ! How deformity looks black 
behind that white virtue ! " The principle is 
useful, but he makes a forced application 
of it. In his novels, too, every reader will 
recall instances where a contrast has been in- 
sisted upon till one's patience is exhausted. 

" Lucrece Borgia " (1833) illustrates the 

same point. It is a piling of horror upon 

horror for the sake, apparently, of bringing 

into sufficient relief a few passages of great 

203 



VICTOR HUGO 

moral beauty. This is as undignified as it 
is useless. Virtue needs no such setting. 
Vinet says that in this drama Hugo pan- 
dered to the false taste of the age, which 
demanded horrors and violence and sensu- 
ous appeals, instead of leading it, as he 
could, to follow better principles of taste. 

"Marie Tudor" (1833) is, like " Crom- 
well," unhistorical. It is not one of Hugo's 
greatest plays, nor is "Angelo" (1835), 
another drama, in prose, and founded on 
history; but " Ruy Bias" (1838) is gener- 
ally acknowledged to be, after " Hernani," 
the best of his dramas. It was followed, 
in 1843, by " Les Burgraves," the last of 
his plays written for the stage. 

We have seen that at a very early age 
Victor Hugo wrote two stories, "Bug Jargal " 
and "Han dTslande." In 1831, while in the 
full heat of his dramatic activity, he yet 
found time, by shutting himself up, and 
going out but once for six months, to write 
" Notre Dame de Paris," which is one of his 
masterpieces of prose, an historical novel 
built on a scale of gigantic proportions, and 
presupposing exhaustive archaeological re- 
search. It is a vast picture, full of glaring 
lights and deep shadows, of Paris in the 
204 



VICTOR HUGO 

Middle Ages, with the cathedral of Notre 
Dame as background, and indeed as one of 
the characters. 

A man who had produced so many strong 
plays and this remarkable novel, not to men- 
tion his lyric poetry, could not longer be 
refused admission into the national galaxy 
of great men, and in 1841 Hugo was elected 
a member of the Academy. Two years 
later he was created a peer of France. In 
spite of these anchors to conservatism, as 
one would suppose them, a title of rank 
and a seat among the Immortals, Hugo be- 
came more and more radical in politics, 
drifting gradually towards the conception 
of an ideal republic, and bending his course 
thitherward. When Louis Bonaparte, not 
content with his election to the presidency 
in 1848, overthrew the government, and pro- 
claimed himself Napoleon III., Emperor of 
the French, by the coup d'etat of Decem- 
ber, 1851, there was no enemy more irrecon- 
cilable than Victor Hugo. The brave poet 
was banished, and did not touch the soil of 
France again till 1870, after Sedan, when the 
Empire had ignominiously dissolved. Al- 
though included in an amnesty, he had not 
been willing to return until the Babylonian 
205 



VICTOR HUGO 

woe was past. Most of his exile he spent 
on the island of Jersey, under the English 
flag. From there he issued a political 
pamphlet, " Napoleon le Petit," and a suc- 
cession of volumes of poetry. His second 
great work of fiction, "Les Miserables," 
appeared in 1862, followed by " Les Tra- 
vailleurs de la Mer," in 1866, and by 
<' Quatre-vingt-treize," in 1874. " L'Homme 
qui Rit," 1866, was an unsuccessful attempt 
at a historical novel, with the scene in Eng- 
land. Of his novels " Les Miserables " is 
incomparably the best. " Les Travailleurs 
de la Mer," while powerful in its unity and 
intensity, is too full of technical terms and 
of idiosyncrasies to be either easy or pleas- 
ant reading. " Notre Dame de Paris " and 
" Quatre-vingt-treize " are the most popular, 
next to " Les Miserables." 

But it is as a lyric poet, I fancy, far more 
than as a dramatist, a novelist, or a politi- 
cal pamphleteer, that Victor Hugo will be 
known, 

"When time has swept both friends and foes." 

Unfortunately, foreign students of French 

literature are less likely to seek acquaintance 

with his poems than with his plays and 

206 



VICTOR HUGO 

novels. The peculiar character of French 
versification repels us. We, accustomed to 
a more heavily accented line, cannot quickly 
sharpen our ears to the delicate modulations 
we encounter there. But when once the ear 
is attuned to these fainter harmonies, a won- 
derful revelation is made to us in the long 
succession of songs that fell from the lips 
of Victor Hugo. 

His poetry is intimately the product of his 
life, especially the emotions and incidents 
connected with his home and family. His 
marriage relation was one of perfect harmony, 
if one may judge of such matters; and he 
was happy in his home. His wife was evi- 
dently the companion of his thought. His 
children were two sons and a daughter. In 
this daughter the poet's deepest love was 
centred, and her graces are the theme of 
many of his loveliest songs, while her prema- 
ture death by drowning, with her young hus- 
band, in 1843, was ^e occasion for that one 
of his lyrics which contains the fullest portion 
of moral grandeur, " A Villequier." It is the 
heartbroken cry of a strong man whom the 
hand of God has at last led back to faith and 
submission along paths of darkest sorrow. 
For it must be remarked that Victor Hugo, 
207 



VICTOR HUGO 

intoxicated with success and the atmosphere 
of protest which he himself had done so 
much to create, had for many years appar- 
ently lost sight of his young manhood's con- 
viction of the immanence of a God in the 
lives of men. After his daughter's death it 
was in his granddaughter Jeanne that his 
affection took root — ■ the same Jeanne whom 
he afterwards celebrated, throughout his old 
age, in the poems which are found in the 
volume entitled " L' Art d'etre grand-pere." 

In the volumes of lyrics from 1822 to 1840, 
including " Odes et Ballades, " "Les Orien- 
tales," "Les Feuilles d'Automne," " Les 
Chants du Crepuscule," " Les Voix interi- 
eures," and "Les Rayons et les Ombres," 
there is a marked change in the views of the 
author as to religion and politics, from con- 
servatism to radicalism, from conviction to 
uncertainty and almost indifference; and 
there seems to be a loss of energy when we 
compare the first with the last productions, 
though there is a gain, of course, in technical 
skill. But in all that time there was only 
an evolution, not a deep moral change im- 
posed from without, for the life of his heart 
was, all those years, serene. His fiery indig- 
nation against Louis Napoleon poured itself 
2o3 



VICTOR HUGO 

out in "Les Chatiments," published in 1853, 
and then followed, in 1856, " Les Contempla- 
tions, ,, which contains the ripest fruits of his 
genius at its prime. Here the offended 
patriot is for the time in the background, and 
although much of the thought is deeply phil- 
osophical, this collection is rich not so much 
in speculative poetry, as in poetry of the 
heart and of daily life. Domestic affection, 
ecstasies of joy in love, in home scenes, in 
natural beauty, outpourings of gratitude, sol- 
emn hymns of duty, awful agonies of grief, 
make this the best biography of Hugo, and 
one of the most touching memorials of hu- 
man life. 

French literature has no sweeter, deeper, 
more beautiful volume of poetry to show. 
The incomparable succession of poems in 
which he sings of his lost child, beginning 
with her infant loveliness and ending with 
the songs which memory dictated to him on 
the anniversaries of her death, are an incom- 
parable expression of fatherly love and poig- 
nant sorrow. In " Les Contemplations " the 
great master lets his large and wholesome 
nature speak its natural language. Here is 
no posing, no affectation of omniscience, no 
striving after imperfectly conceived ideals. 
14 209 



VICTOR HUGO 

Vanished is the man of public affairs, van- 
ished the would-be demigod; and the voice 
we hear is bravely human, though more elo- 
quent than the voices of other men. Pure 
joys, consecrated sorrows, a ripening mind, 
and length of days were giving to the poet 
faith, humility, and insight. 

But his exile broke this succession of tran- 
quil years and growing thoughts, and from 
1852 to 1870, from "Les Chatiments " to 
"L'Annee terrible," there runs through his 
volumes a deep undertone of solicitude for 
the welfare of France, and more especially 
of sad personal yearning to be again upon 
her soil. " L'Annee terrible," the year of 
the invasion of France, the siege of Paris, 
and the Commune, brought him back. The 
very day that Napoleon le Petit followed his 
conquerors out of French territory, Victor 
Hugo entered, and, proceeding to Paris, 
threw himself passionately into the national 
defence. It may seem a strange thing to say, 
but this year of disaster must have been a 
grand and almost a joyous one in Hugo's life. 
It was the vindication of his exile, in so far as 
that had been voluntary. It gave him a 
chance, which he embraced, of translating 
his heroic words into deeds. 
210 



VICTOR HUGO 

The rest of his life, from 1872 to 1885, was 
spent in conspicuous eminence, on a throne 
of popularity where he sat the autocrat of 
republican France, without a rival, and with 
scarce an enemy. It is true that his career 
as an active politician was a failure, but then 
it must have been soon apparent to him that 
he ought never to have entered upon it, and 
that he could be more useful and incom- 
parably more distinguished in his own work. 
His lyrical history of the world, "La Legende 
des Siecles," of which the first part appeared 
in 1859, was continued in 1876 and 1883. 
Another volume of lyrics, " Les Chansons 
des rues et des bois," was published in 1865. 
" L'Art d'etre grand-pere " was published in 
1876, and " Les quatre vents de l'Esprit " in 
1881. 

These volumes are a vast storehouse of 
experiments in many kinds of verse and in 
the expression of many kinds of thought and 
feeling. They impress one rather with the 
poet's power and resourcefulness than with 
artistic perfection as in " Les Contempla- 
tions." But in all he shows himself a very 
great and beautiful poet. He died in Paris, 
on the 22d of May, 1885. His funeral was 
a demonstration which has seldom been 
211 



VICTOR HUGO 

equalled in the world's history for solemn 
pomp and the proud grief of a nation. 

The question of the man's personality 
need not enter into our estimate of a dram- 
atist, a novelist, or a historian, though as a 
matter of fact it generally does. But we can 
hardly consider lyric poetry merely with ref- 
erence to its intrinsic quality. Lyric poetry 
is generally a record of intimate emotions, 
the sublimation of a life ; and this is peculi- 
arly true in the case of Victor Hugo. For, 
after all, his chief subject was himself. It 
is certainly permissible, and we can readily 
understand that it is indeed almost necessary, 
that a lyric poet should view the world sub- 
jectively. But it is a marked characteristic 
of Hugo's work that he cannot get outside 
of himself, that he is rarely carried away by 
his passion for the beautiful and the true, 
though this passion he did really possess. 
So although we cannot blame his egoism as 
a fault, we must deplore it as a defect; for on 
account of it alone he falls short, in the opin- 
ion of many critics, of being a great world- 
poet, one of the supreme consolers and 
sustainers of humanity. 

There is a fine essay on Victor Hugo by 
Mr. Frederic VV. H. Myers, which all stu- 

212 



VICTOR HUGO 

dents of the poet ought to read, not only 
because it is a very thorough criticism of 
Hugo as a lyric poet, but also because it is 
a masterly piece of work altogether, and full 
of suggestions. Mr. Myers says : " In his 
moral nature we shall find much that is 
strong, elevated, and tender; a true passion 
for France, a true sympathy for the poor and 
the oppressed, a true fondness for children. 
Further than this it will be hard to go ; so 
plain will it be that the egoism which pene- 
trates M. Hugo's character is a bar to all 
higher sublimity, and has exercised a dis- 
astrous effect on his intellectual as well as on 
his moral character." 

Mr. Myers seems too sparing of his praise 
for what Hugo did that is excellent in poetry, 
passing without mention some of his sweet- 
est songs and most stirring outbursts of 
grandeur. His essay came as an antidote 
to the immoderate eulogy published just be- 
fore by Mr. Swinburne, and certainly gives 
us a calmer estimate of Hugo. Mr. Myers, 
however, does not do justice to the contents 
of Hugo's poetry, and he was perhaps not as 
susceptible of being ravished by the form as 
Swinburne was. Yet there is truth in what 
Mr. Myers says when he tells us that he 
213 



VICTOR HUGO 

thinks Hugo's " central distinction lies in his 
unique power over the French language, 
greatly resembling Mr. Swinburne's power 
over the English language, and manifesting 
itself chiefly in beauty and inventiveness of 
poetical form and melody." Mr. Dowden 
speaks with high praise of Hugo's successful 
efforts " to reform the rhythm of French 
verse, to enrich its rhymes, to give mobility 
to the caesura, to carry the sense beyond the 
couplet, to substitute definite and picturesque 
words in place of the fadeurs of classical 
mythology and vague poetical periphrasis." 
And this is indeed the chief general distinc- 
tion of the Romanticists, for their searching 
of foreign literature and mediaeval history 
brought them less poetical material than 
variety and vigor of poetical form. 

Well-grounded and natural as may be the 
misgivings of English and American readers, 
who have attempted an estimate of the great 
Frenchman, it is doubtful if he has received 
sufficient praise at their hands for the quali- 
ties in which he so unquestionably excels, — 
the immense variety of his themes, the au- 
dacity of his flights, the purity of his ideals, 
the sincerity of his beliefs, the subtle and yet 
powerful beauty of his music. Perhaps we 
214 



VICTOR HUGO 

shall appreciate better how great a poet he is 
if we stop to consider that, after all, he is 
only a poet, and not really a novelist, in any 
strict sense of the word, nor a critic, nor a 
philosopher, nor even a dramatist. For all 
his work is lyrical. It is all passionate, sub- 
jective, musical. " Les Miserables," " Les 
Travailleurs de la Mer," and the other so- 
called novels, are vast poems, just as Car- 
lyle's " French Revolution " is a poem. 
" Hernani " is far from perfect as an acting 
drama. Regarded merely as a play to be 
read, it is full of exasperating peculiarities. 
It is really a succession of intensely passion- 
ate lyric lines, passages, and scenes, in which 
we never for more than a moment at a time 
are left without a sense of the author's pres- 
ence. He does not let his characters work 
out their own fate, in any of his tragedies. 
He imposes his own sympathies and preju- 
dices upon us. His opinions, his experi- 
ences, his emotions, his ideals are kept alive 
in our consciousness by every page Victor 
Hugo wrote. 

I have purposely quoted some of the sever- 
est things I could find in English criticism, 
because I wish to conclude with words of 
homage, which will carry more weight if it is 
215 



VICTOR HUGO 

perceived that they were not blindly penned. 
It is in itself a great achievement to have 
done so much honest work of a high charac- 
ter as Hugo did. It is no small distinction 
to have guided a people's hopes for eighteen 
years from his island of exile. It is a noble 
end of a zealous life to have worn for fifteen 
years the crown of such a nation's kingship. 
But when even these proud honors are for- 
gotten, children's voices will still repeat and 
men's hearts still echo a hundred songs of 
the greatest lyric poet of France. 



216 



SAINTE-BEUVE 



217 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

Like many other French writers of ex- 
quisite prose, Sainte-Beuve's fondest ambi- 
tion was to be a poet. Three volumes of 
passable verse bear witness to this desire. 
"Les Poesies de Joseph Delorme" appeared 
in 1829, "Les Consolations" in 1830, u Les 
Pensees d'aout" in 1837. Although they do 
not lift us into a very high region of imagina- 
tion, they put us on vantage-ground whence 
we can look backward and forward in 
Sainte-Beuve's life, discovering his native 
temper, the peculiarities of his education, 
and the object of his youthful enthusiasms, 
and fixing the point of departure for his 
maturer progress. They betray an inferior 
poet, but announce a curious discerner of 
literary qualities. For the single remark- 
able thing about them is that they contain 
almost the only French poetry which is due 
directly to the influence of the English Lake 
School. We can readily understand that 
Walter Scott and Byron, each for different 
219 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

reasons, should affect continental literature. 
We feel the power of the one or the other 
in Manzoni and Leopardi, in Goethe and 
Heine, in Hugo, Vigny, Musset. But it is 
with a start of surprise and pleasure, fol- 
lowed perhaps by an incredulous shaking 
of the head, that we recognize in a French 
dress the spirit of Wordsworth. The poets 
of common life — and in this lies part of 
their charm — are subject to a certain de- 
gree of local limitation. They are inspired 
by those familiar things, the details of land- 
scape, custom, and modes of thought, which 
contribute largely to determine the difference 
between one country and another. And the 
Lake poets are so thoroughly English, so 
essentially Protestant, and have in them so 
little of merely specious beauty which ap- 
peals immediately to the senses, that the 
Latin mind does not readily domesticate 
itself among them on their bleak north- 
ern hills. For you must make your home 
with Wordsworth if you wish to know his 
heart. He will not cross the seas to you. 
Yet Sainte-Beuve, from this humble emi- 
nence of his youthful verse, greets the Lake 
poets not unfittingly, on the whole, as one 
who has returned from a delightful sojourn 

220 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

with them ; and there is one sonnet of Words- 
worth's, to mention nothing more, which he 
has translated in a manner approximating 
perfection. 

The capacity to become thus sympatheti- 
cally acquainted with a foreign literature 
would show, even in the absence of all 
other proof, that Sainte-Beuve, at the time 
these poems were written, was a Romanti- 
cist, that he was, like Hugo and Vigny, 
looking abroad for themes untried in France 
and a fresh method. But to feel the breath 
of the English lakes he must have gone 
farther afield than any other Romanticist had 
done. His appreciation of the most national 
and intimate development of English poetry 
prepares us to hear that there was an Eng- 
lish strain in his blood. His mother was 
the daughter of an Englishwoman. His 
father, a revenue officer of Boulogne-sur- 
mer, was a man of liberal culture, and 
Charles-Augustin, the son, attributed to him 
his own taste for reading. But the influence 
was wholly hereditary, for the boy was born 
December 23, 1804, several months after 
his father's death. In 18 18 his mother re- 
moved with him to Paris, to give him better 
opportunities for education, and after finish- 
221 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

ing his college studies he entered the Ecole 
de Medecine. His course here was inter- 
rupted and presently terminated by an ex- 
cursion into journalism. One of his old 
teachers, Dubois, editor of the " Globe " 
newspaper, encouraged him, in 1824 and 
1825, to write a few book-reviews, and the 
new work soon absorbed his attention. 

On the 2d and 9th of January, 1827, 
Sainte-Beuve published a review of Victor 
Hugo's "Odes et Ballades." His criticism, 
which was discriminating and yet enthusias- 
tically favorable, resulted in his becoming 
acquainted with Hugo, who lived but two 
doors from his lodgings. At Hugo's house 
he was introduced to the cenacle or sympo- 
sium of the Romanticists. He cast his for- 
tunes in with theirs in the combat for freedom 
of form and a wider field of literary effort, 
publishing the following year a " Tableau 
historique et critique de la poesie frangaise 
et du theatre frangais au XVIme siecle," in 
which he aimed to give historical support 
to his new friends by calling attention to 
the spontaneous spirit and the technical 
variety of Ronsard, Du Bellay, and other 
poets of the Renaissance. These fine old 
writers had been contemptuously thrown 
222 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

into the lumber-room of barbarous anti- 
quities by Boileau, Voltaire, and La Harpe. 

Between 1825 and 1830 the Romanticists, 
whatever they became afterwards, were ad- 
vocates of monarchy and Catholicism. In 
his review of the " Odes et Ballades " Sainte- 
Beuve had shown that he was not yet of the 
new school by describing their religion as 
" mysticism " and including the word Chris- 
tianity under the category of " mythology/' 
But by 1829 he had accomplished one of 
those right-about-face movements for which 
he was to become notorious, and his poetry 
shows him, like the Hugo of that time, stand- 
ing near the steps of a throne which, for all 
its pomp of outward decoration, has a sinis- 
ter resemblance to the guillotine. His face 
is towards Rome and he seems oblivious of 
the fact that the Revolution has much of its 
work still to do. 

After the uprising of 1830 Sainte-Beuve 
again began writing for the " Globe," al- 
though it was now edited in the interests 
of the Saint-Simonian socialists. He sub- 
sequently disclaimed all sympathy with their 
religious opinions. In 1829 he had contrib- 
uted to the " Revue de Paris," and he was 
one of the founders of the " Revue des Deux 
223 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

Mondes," in 183 1, and continued for many 
years one of its most frequent writers. Under 
the new political influences he wrote, in 1831, 
for Armand Carrel's liberal paper, the " Na- 
tional." Sainte-Beuve's enemies, of whom 
there were always not a few, have dealt very 
severely with him on the ground of his being 
a turn-coat in politics and religion. A flex- 
ible, easily-influenced mind he certainly had ; 
he seems at times a pure intelligence, the 
uncolored and uncoloring medium of other 
men's thoughts, only his taste for style re- 
maining his own. To an English or Ameri- 
can observer there is not necessarily any 
culpable inconsistency in writing literary 
articles for a newspaper with the politics 
of which one does not agree. In France, 
however, the matter is not so simple, no 
doubt because of the complication of poli- 
tics with religion and with social standing. 

His nearest approach to Christian belief 
was perhaps in 1832, when he was under 
the influence of Lamennais; and traces, 
shallow and wavering to be sure, of this ap- 
proach are to be distinguished in the novel, 
" Volupte," which Sainte-Beuve published in 
1834. Three years later he began a course 
of lectures at the Academy of Lausanne, 
224 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

which he published subsequently as the early 
portion of his " Histoire de Port- Royal." 
This great work was not completed, how- 
ever, until 1859, although the first of its five 
large volumes appeared in 1840. It is a 
monument of industry, and reveals the fact 
that Sainte-Beuve, even before his prime, 
was perfectly at home in the personal and 
literary history of the seventeenth century. 
But it lacks flow. It is too manifestly a me- 
chanical construction. It makes quite evi- 
dent that Sainte-Beuve was not at his best 
unless writing short articles for newspapers 
and reviews. However deeply impressed he 
may have been with the unity, the almost 
personal individuality, of his subject, he was 
not able to give these qualities to his book, 
which is inorganic. It purports to be not 
only a history of the great Jansenist monas- 
tery and its men and women, its schools and 
books, but also of all the people who in any 
way affected it or came within its sphere of 
influence. The author succeeds better in 
the unhampered flights which this last pur- 
pose allowed, than he does in giving us a 
systematic account of Port-Royal. The best 
biographies, the best histories, have always 
been written by enthusiasts. Sainte-Beuve 
15 225 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

had only an impersonal, and towards the 
last an artificial interest in his grand theme. 
During the twenty years of its execution, his 
religious views underwent such a change 
that the man who in the first volume exalts 
the miracles of " grace " appears a different 
person from him who throughout the fifth 
tries in vain to mask his contempt for Chris- 
tianity in any form. We have not here, in 
this laborious failure, the real Sainte-Beuve, 
any more than we have the real Port-Royal. 
There is, for one thing, an unnatural restraint 
of his peculiar powers. It has been well 
said that he seems to have written the book 
on a wager. Certainly it was concluded 
either in a spirit of hypocrisy or in that spirit 
of cynical bravado which is so close a fellow 
to hypocrisy that it must needs masquerade 
as its opposite. The tone of the book is 
neither one of manly partisanship nor one 
of free, inquisitive, animated exposition. The 
reader feels that Sainte-Beuve is treading, 
with steps profane though carefully muffled, 
through saintly cells and corridors where 
only moralists and reverent philosophers 
have the right to feel at home. But his 
judgments in the sphere of ethics and reli- 
gion never do carry the same authority 
226 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

as his decisions in matters of literary 
taste. 

After his return from Switzerland, he was 
appointed, in 1840, librarian of the Biblio- 
theque mazarine. During this decade of his 
life, 1834-1844, he was publishing, chiefly in 
the " Revue de Paris " and the " Revue des 
Deux Mondes," his " Portraits litteraires " and 
"Portraits contemporains." In 1845 he was 
admitted to the French Academy, in the 
place of Casimir Delavigne, the address of 
welcome being made by Victor Hugo. He 
held his office of librarian up to the revolution 
of 1848. Owing to the troubles of that year, 
he again left France, accepting a professor- 
ship at Liege. His lectures here were on 
French literature in the early part of the 
nineteenth century, and resulted in two vol- 
umes, entitled " Chateaubriand et son Groupe 
litteraire sous l'Empire," published in i860. 

Coming back to Paris from Belgium, in 
1849, he began writing, for the " Constitu- 
tionnel," his " Causeries du Lundi," short in- 
formal talks upon literature, which appeared 
every Monday, as the name implies. To this 
task he set himself with even more than his 
accustomed energy and systematic determi- 
nation. The whole week, except Monday, 
227 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

when he received his friends, was devoted to 
the labor of research and composition. His 
secretaries looked up references in the libra- 
ries and brought him the needed books and 
citations. He read thoroughly and repeat- 
edly the author he was to criticise, and dic- 
tated his impressions. Upon the arrival of 
proof-sheets, many additions and changes 
were made, and it was after he saw his work 
in print that he gave it those heightening 
touches which determine the style. This 
was also Balzac's manner of composition. 

Captivated perhaps by Louis Napoleon's in- 
sidious mot : " L'Empire c'est la paix," Sainte- 
Beuve allied himself with the Bonapartists, to 
the scandal of most of his literary associates, 
and wrote for the official journal, the " Mon- 
iteur," after 1852. He also accepted an ap- 
pointment to a chair of Latin poetry in the 
College de France, but the students, as a 
demonstration against his political views, re- 
fused to listen to his lectures, and he very 
soon gave up the attempt to read them. 
They were published in 1857, under the title 
of an " Etude sur Virgile." His increasing 
reputation, no less than the Emperor's favor, 
secured him a position as lecturer at the 
licole normale, but in 1861 he discontinued 
228 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

teaching and applied himself more exclu- 
sively to his work for the " Constitutionnel," 
which offered him a liberal financial induce- 
ment. In 1865 he was named a member of 
the Senate, where, by defending Renan from 
a charge of atheism, and by speaking in be- 
half of the liberty of the press, he regained 
much of the popularity he had lost in 1848. 
Some of his latest work appeared in the 
" Temps," a liberal paper much dreaded by 
the imperialists. By this alliance, and by his 
conduct in the Senate, he declared himself a 
member of the opposition. He died after a 
painful illness, October 13, 1869. Most of 
his former friends had been alienated from 
him by his attacks upon them or upon their 
literary idols, or by his political course, or 
by his complete renunciation of Christian 
faith and practice. At his own request his 
body was buried without religious rites. 

There is nothing particularly inspiring in 
Sainte-Beuve's life if we consider it apart 
from his work as the author of a minute, 
comprehensive, and sympathetic history of 
French literature. His literary criticism 
alone is his title to fame. If we detach from 
our conception of him any notion of his being 
really important or admirable in other re- 
229 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

spects, our appreciation of his true value will 
gain rather than lose. His novel and his 
poetry possess only a personal and relative 
interest, and his life was open to several 
grave charges. One of these is that he was 
a place-hunter and time-server. The im- 
putation cannot be substantiated in this 
sweeping form. Sainte-Beuve was sincerely 
conservative, and his early alliance with the 
radicals was not one to which he was drawn 
by political affinity at all. He chose his 
early associates solely because they were 
men of letters, and in spite of their being 
republicans or socialists. And moreover, a 
man may be a monarchist without being 
either corrupt or blind, although most of 
Sainte-Beuve's literary friends would hardly 
have admitted this. Yet there may well 
have been some moral obliquity in a man 
of letters who could follow Louis Napoleon 
in 1852, and for what was considered his 
servility and short-sightedness in doing so 
Sainte-Beuve has been severely blamed. 

Far more marked were his changes of atti- 
tude towards religion ; and his final position 
of cold and passive hostility to Christianity 
has no dignity in itself and robs of all beauty 
his earlier postures of calm satisfaction with 
230 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

Catholicism and then of receptiveness to a 
rational or Protestant faith. The processes 
of his development are partly concealed from 
us, more completely concealed, in fact, than 
one would expect in a man who wrote so 
voluminously. But somehow one can hardly 
believe that his changes of opinion were the 
result of a foot-by-foot struggle. He probably 
never went as far towards religious convic- 
tion as he professed. His early enthusiasms 
seem, in part at least, fictitious. This mind 
of crystal could reflect the studious lamp- 
light or the vulgar flare of gas-light, and even 
the light of the sun, but it fixed and held no 
color. 

But these deductions thus made, there 
remains the great Sainte-Beuve, Sainte- 
Beuve the literary critic. Here is beauty, 
consistency, virtue, here is something solid 
and heroic. His chief critical writings are 
contained in the five volumes of " Port-Royal," 
the two volumes of " Chateaubriand et son 
Groupe," the three volumes of " Premiers 
Lundis," the five volumes of " Portraits con- 
temporains," the three volumes of " Portraits 
litteraires," the single volume " Portraits de 
Femmes," and particularly and best of all in 
the fifteen volumes of " Causeries du Lundi," 
2 3 l 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

and the thirteen of " Nouveaux Lundis." 
Forty-seven volumes, and yet no mention 
made of half-a-dozen others which might be 
classed as literary criticism ! 

Of the importance of this work I cannot 
say too much. It is unique among the his- 
tories of literature in all languages. It is 
perhaps the most complete reconstitution of 
the past ever achieved. With respect of the 
realities of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries in France, it is what Balzac deemed 
that the fiction of the " Comedie humaine" 
was for the first fifty years of the nineteenth. 
Sainte-Beuve must be accounted really great 
as a discoverer, an appreciator, a defender of 
good literature. There have been critics in 
whom the passionate love of truth burned 
whiter and beat more effectually. We think 
at once of Lessing. There have been others 
who embraced the round of human action 
with more comprehensive sympathy and 
whose dicta possess the sanity . of perfect 
intellectual freedom. Goethe is thus univer- 
sally sound. By leaps of lightning ratioci- 
nation Shelley penetrated to the sources of 
light as no other spirit ever has. Matthew 
Arnold, who discovered Sainte-Beuve to the 
English public, had a more earnest spirit, a 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

more general range, and a nobler style than 
his French contemporary. It is to Sainte- 
Beuve's honor if he is named at all in such 
company, when quality alone is considered. 
But in the matter of quantity and complete- 
ness, he has his place as unassailable and un- 
shared as their several places are. His work, 
too, is more specific, and makes just claims 
of being wrought out of original and often 
recondite material. His critical writings, 
published in daily newspapers and other 
periodicals throughout a space of forty-two 
years, disconnected though they are, form, 
after all, the best history of French literature. 
Even those who with Zola object to the 
spirit which informs them, regard them never- 
theless as having great " documentary " value. 
And persons who prefer the synthetic method 
of Taine, based on philosophical assumptions, 
must concede the advantages of facility and 
directness which Sainte-Beuve's untrammelled 
process affords. When a man begins to 
read Sainte-Beuve from inclination, relishing 
him keenly, — when curiosity to learn about 
the characters of Sainte-Beuve's world is 
united with appreciation of his critical vir- 
tue and his ceaseless and varied charm of 
speech, the gates fly open which lead into a 
233 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

hundred high-walled gardens of the past, 
and the initiation into French literature is 
accomplished. 

Yet his work, the best of it, was performed 
under the conditions of journalism. The 
book-criticisms we find in old back numbers 
of reviews and magazines appear generally to 
our eyes as faded and discolored as the pages 
upon which they have been lying. Truly the 
fashion of them has perished. Speaking of 
his immediate predecessors in French criti- 
cism, Feletz, Dussault, Hoffman, all of them 
writers for the "Journal de FEmpire," Sainte- 
Beuve says : " We have often heard of the 
good old times of literary criticism under the 
Consulate and the Empire. Looking back 
on that brilliant reign of criticism, we catch 
ourselves wishing we could see it return again 
in a form suitable to our epoch. Yet we 
should be rather surprised if some fine morn- 
ing we found in our newspapers the same 
articles on general subjects, the same feuil- 
letonsy and on the same literary questions, 
regarded from the point of view whence they 
used to be so interesting. Notice that I 
speak here only of those questions and of 
those subjects which seem eternally in order 
— Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, La Bruyere, 
234 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

Lesage. We should be astonished, I say, 
at the manner in which these subjects were 
treated ; it would seem to us much too easy, 
much too simple. And in general, when one 
takes up, after a few intervening years, any 
old article in criticism or polemics, one is 
struck with the disproportion between these 
articles themselves and the effect they have 
produced, or the memory they have left." 

In contrast with these men, and in spite of 
the fact that like them he did most of his 
work for daily newspapers, Sainte-Beuve is 
still a living author. His writings possess 
qualities which are more common now in 
history and criticism than they were fifty 
years ago. They display an erudition and 
a patience in research which Sainte-Beuve 
among the first introduced into French liter- 
ary study and which seem wholly modern. 
Far from being ephemeral, they are an ever- 
lastingly useful repository of information and 
light. 

He began his work in this sort at a time 
when criticism was more needed than it had 
been since Voltaire. After the Restoration, 
from 1815 to 1830, it was felt that an unusual 
opportunity for national usefulness lay before 
any writer of genius who could advance a 
235 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

new and attractive theory of life, or better 
still, breathe a fresh spirit into old forms and 
clothe the maxims of a venerable faith with 
the authority of reason. France was intel- 
lectually disorganized. Any prophet who 
raised his voice could gather followers. So- 
ciety was shattered from top to bottom. The 
educational views of conflicting parties were 
irreconcilable. Politically it was felt that the 
Restoration would only afford time for erup- 
tive forces to gather strength. The Church 
had lost much power since 1789, and yet its 
support was supposed to be necessary to the 
State. Although " the abyss of revolution " 
was only partly filled, perhaps because this 
was so, and many institutions were tottering 
near its brink, the times were more favorable 
to a conservative than to a radical philosophy 
of life. 

A moderate and rational Catholicism, and 
a dignified respect for the pre-revolutionary 
traditions of the country, provided, however, 
they were combined with an acknowledgment 
of the unchangeable results of the Revo- 
lution, — these were the qualities which it 
was hoped some great intellectual leader 
would possess. He might be retrospective, 
but he must not be retrogressive. We shall 
236 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

not be surprised, therefore, at the welcome 
given to Chateaubriand and Lamartine. Here 
were two poets of unquestionable genius. 
The sources of the great deep seemed to 
have been opened to supply their inexhaust- 
ible speech. They came forward with many 
professions of power to heal and quiet 

quella inferma, 
Che non pub trovar posa in sulle piume 
Ma con dar volta sito dolore scher?na. 

They had good intentions. They had fervor. 
They had charm. But alas, they were not 
great souls, strong in self-command. Igno- 
rant of themselves, and how to rule them- 
selves, they were not able to persuade by 
example. Lessing, endowed with the very 
kind of moral greatness which they lacked, 
was patient and independent even when Ger- 
many refused to listen to him, and at last he 
re-awoke the national spirit in her literature. 
Wordsworth had this quiet dignity, and stirred 
England to consciousness of her poetical in- 
heritance. Perhaps if Chateaubriand and 
Lamartine had met with the same salutary 
rebuffs which schooled Lessing and Words- 
worth at the beginning of their careers, they 
might have grown to more manly stature of 
237 



SAINTE-BEUVB 

mind. But they were over-estimated from the 
first. Chateaubriand particularly was spoiled 
by flattery. He was the pet of women — a 
drawing-room hero. A false leader was he 
forsooth in the blundering march France was 
starting up to make towards faith and peace 
and wisdom. He had not enough character 
to stop his ears to the solicitations of the 
enemy, although accepting the leadership 
offered him and giving his approval of the 
plan of campaign. He saw too much to 
admire in the very foes he had been chosen 
to attack. He would fain have sworn a truce 
with them. At one time it was Werther who 
seduced him ; at another " Childe Harold." 
He could not look straight forward steadily. 
He is one of the most decent of writers, but 
one of the most dangerous. In the tell-tale 
matter of style it is evident enough that a 
revolution separates him from Voltaire, from 
Montesquieu, from Diderot — a revolution in 
taste. He has little of their simplicity, their 
candor. 

One of the clearest proofs of Sainte-Beuve's 
instinct for discovering literary tendencies is 
his early perception that Chateaubriand had 
to be reckoned with as the first great power 
for good or evil in the thought of the century 
238 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

In France, He readily acknowledged Cha- 
teaubriand's wonderful qualities, but, from 
the first, kept something in reserve. It is 
interesting to note how this hidden reser- 
vation grew in spite of him, through years 
of quasi-discipleship, until at last it came 
forth a loud, decided No. The critic in 
Sainte-Beuve was, even at the beginning of 
his career, puzzled and excited by a sense 
of Chateaubriand's weakness. 

Sainte-Beuve detected the note of personal 
vanity and unsoundness in Chateaubriand 
and the note of intellectual insufficiency in 
Lamartine. He perceived, dimly at first and 
notwithstanding his cordial admiration of 
their power, that even their genius for ex- 
pression — and it was genius — tempted them 
into a facile substitution of rhetoric for 
thought, that, as Lowell says, they were 
the lackeys of fine phrases. And when 
he learned to know them in personal in- 
tercourse, particularly Chateaubriand, he 
reached the conclusion that their own sen- 
timents, their own lives, their own greatness, 
or their own weaknesses and faults, were the 
sole subject of their poetry, the sole theme 
of all their eloquence. They published to 
the world and elevated to the dignity of 
2 39 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

eternal law the fleeting instincts of their indi- 
vidual natures. In other words, they were 
sentimentalists. The simplicity of great art- 
ists, the unconscious repose of great men, 
were absent from Chateaubriand and Lamar- 
tine. Yet the public was corrupted in turn 
by those whom it had spoiled. A species 
of unsound enthusiasm — what the French 
call engouement — followed them. Early in 
his career Sainte-Beuve comprehended that 
what his generation needed, in the face of 
these infatuations, was sane and conservative 
criticism. He himself was far from worship- 
ping the popular gods. Spite of studied 
compliment and delicate praise for them, 
there is nothing in all his writings so evident 
as his antipathy to Chateaubriand and his 
distaste for Lamartine. His own enthusi- 
asm was all for the French classics. He 
appreciated what criticism had done for his 
seventeenth-century authors. He contrasted 
the fruitfulness of the writers trained and 
trimmed by Boileau with the barrenness of 
many intellects which he saw going to waste 
about him. "Do you know," he asks, "what 
has been wanting to the poets of our day, 
poets originally so full of natural talent, of 
promises, and happy inspirations? There 
240 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

has been wanting a Boileau and an enlight- 
ened monarch, the one establishing and sup- 
porting the other. As a result, these men 
of talent, perceiving that they were in an era 
of anarchy where discipline there was none, 
soon began to act accordingly, conducting 
themselves, not like noble geniuses, or even 
like men, but literally like schoolboys in 
vacation. We have seen the result." 

To be the enemy of engouernents and of 
all charlatanism, Sainte-Beuve pronounces 
" the true and characteristic mark of a critic. " 
We have seen that it was this dislike of un- 
deserved enthusiasm which first made him 
suspicious of Chateaubriand. The point is 
worth noticing, for it was by following the 
trail his instinct led him to take in this mat- 
ter that he finally found and wore deep those 
main paths of literary criticism which he 
continued with increasing certitude to beat. 
Chateaubriand was his first big game. In 
his pursuit of him Sainte-Beuve learned to 
trust his own impressions, and depend upon 
his courage, and first practised the critic's 
arts. His success and the perilous pleasures 
of the chase had, moreover, the effect of 
determining, to a large extent, the character 
of his critical spirit. Sleeping faculties of 
16 241 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

analysis were awakened in him. Knowing 
the outcome, it is curious to observe the 
fascination Chateaubriand exercised over 
him. It was the fascination of antipathy. 
In his early essays Sainte-Beuve seems un- 
able to free himself from the consciousness 
that Chateaubriand will read and criticise 
him. Although denying him more and 
more the essential qualities of a true man 
and a great writer, Sainte-Beuve half unwit- 
tingly and all unwillingly acknowledges his 
supremacy among French authors of the 
first part of the century. Time has more 
than justified Sainte-Beuve's reticence and 
even his boldest attacks, for few literary 
reputations have suffered a greater collapse 
than that of this lion of the first Empire, this 
idol of the Restoration. Lamartine's is an- 
other faded glory. So is that of Lamennais. 
Sainte-Beuve's falling away from these men 
in the day of their success was at the time 
often attributed to jealousy or lack of amen- 
ity in personal relations. The asperities of 
his criticism of them were the more notice- 
able because of the urbanity which is in the 
main characteristic of his Portraits and Caus- 
eries. But we see now that his conservative 
judgment and good taste were the real causes 
242 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

of his refusal to go with the multitude. In 
the case of Alfred de Musset, however, for 
whom he was also severe, time has been 
more clement. 

It was Sainte-Beuve's taste for the best 
French style, the style of the later years of 
the reign of Louis XIV., no less than his 
personal acquaintance with the real Chateau- 
briand and the real Lamartine, which saved 
him from engouement. His analytical sense 
was further aroused by his opposition to 
another of the powerful literary currents of 
his time, the Gallican, but mystical, Catho- 
lic movement of Lamennais and Lacordaire. 
Although few men have been more liable 
to enthusiasms, engrossing even if brief, 
Sainte-Beuve never lost sight of certain defi- 
nite historical standards. His reconstructive 
activity was aroused by his love of the best 
French style, as he found it in Pascal, Racine, 
Madame de Sevign6, Voltaire, Madame du 
Deffand, Montesquieu, and by the satisfaction 
afforded to his aesthetic sense by the tranquil 
formalism of the ancien regime. 

The keynote of all his firmest criticism is 

struck in the following words, which he might 

with propriety have placed at the head of 

his collected Causeries : " As for us critics, 

243 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

placed between tradition and innovation, it 
is our delight to be forever recalling the past 
with reference to the present, comparing the 
two and insisting on the excellence of the 
old work while welcoming the new, — for I 
am not speaking of those critics who are 
always ready to sacrifice systematically the 
one to the other. While the young modern 
artist swims in the full stream of the present, 
rejoicing in it, quenching his thirst in it, and 
dazzled by its sheen, we live in these com- 
parisons, so full of repose, and take our 
pleasure in the thousand ideas to which they 
give birth." 

This is the whole story of Sainte-Beuve's 
usefulness. This is his apologia pro vita sua. 
Thus conceived, the office of criticism has 
the nobility of self-effacement in the cause of 
public welfare. It is a work of rescue. All 
about us and within us there are immature 
and dangerous ideas struggling for accept- 
ance. Weak or pernicious books are ap- 
pearing in greater number than good ones, 
itl-balanced men are pushing forward. If 
these men, these ideas, these books prevail, 
and in so far as they prevail, the work of 
culture is retarded. We know that in the 
long day Time will sift much that is true 
244 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

from all this false, but that does not make 
our individual misfortune less if, while we 
live, the second-best is preferred to the really 
excellent. Many philosophers would have 
us believe that man possesses a faculty of 
such sort as to distinguish intuitively the 
beautiful in literature, art, and nature. Sainte- 
Beuve, however, was an experimentalist in 
this. Most of us are of the same creeping 
school. We are willing to profit by the 
opinions of others. We prefer to read the 
books which have lasted longest and been 
most in human hands. We are afraid to 
trust the aesthetic sense. We have our own 
ideas, to be sure. You may always have 
thought Byron or the Italian opera unsatis- 
factory, but it required the weight of a con- 
sensus of other people's judgments in the 
same direction to make you altogether fixed 
and happy in your decision. For one thing, 
the critical sense changes with age. At four- 
teen, we deem " Lalla Rookh " a great Eng- 
lish classic. At seventy-five, very likely, we 
shall have settled down to a steady perusal 
of Job and Solomon, content with their elo- 
quent inconclusiveness. A healthy criticism, 
however, bids us take into account the experi- 
ence of men at all times of life, young men, 
245 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

middle-aged men, old men, and submit our- 
selves somewhat to their tastes. And the 
testimony of the dead is at least as valuable 
as that of the living. It is perhaps the most 
significant difference between science and 
literature that the former often deals exclu- 
sively with things at present in the world, 
without a single backward look at historical 
antecedents, whereas literature not only has 
its roots in the past, but blooms and ripens 
there. The study of literature gives as one 
of its happiest results the sense of the con- 
tinuity of thought and the dependence of 
each age upon its predecessors. 

11 Can the rush grow up without mire ? 
Can the flag grow without water ? " 
" Inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, 
And apply thyself to that which their fathers have 
searched out." 

The advice of Bildad the Shuhite is a sound 
maxim in criticism. 

But without literary tradition, without the 
message travelling down from mouth to 
mouth, the excellent men of the past become 
mere names to us. The critic must compel 
us to read and enjoy. It would occur to 
relatively few persons, for instance, to read 
the sermons of Bossuet, were it not for 
246 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

literary tradition. After his death the impres- 
sion of his power persisted. Even in the 
eighteenth century his works continued to be 
read, as of the things which are perpetually 
in order ; and in spite of the changing times 
his reputation was not sensibly diminished. 
Finally, through men competent to judge, we 
learn that he must be placed with Moliere 
and La Fontaine as one of the kings of 
seventeenth-century literature, and thus per- 
suaded, we cannot help reading him. But 
do we read him impartially, without prepos- 
session in his favor, coming to him thus at the 
bidding of others ? Most certainly not. Nor 
is there anything we do judge with godlike 
freedom. We are entangled in the web of 
human tradition, ourselves a part of its living 
tissue. Our skulls are not exhausted re- 
ceivers, for the accurate performance of ex- 
periments, at least not in literary judgment. 
They are on the contrary almost wholly pre- 
possessed with the ideas of others. If we 
have companied with good men, both of the 
living and of the dead, the contents of our 
minds will be made up of maxims got from 
sound men and solid books, mixed with a 
little wisdom and folly of our own. This is 
a humble view and shocking to theorists. 
247 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

Like the saying, " Resist the devil and he 
will flee from you," it may be distasteful to 
the young, but it finds an affirmative response 
in every old man's heart. The older a book 
is, therefore, the more likely it is to have 
been thoroughly tested, and from this it 
might be concluded that our reading should 
be wholly from ancient authors. But various 
circumstances secure a hearing for the living, 
in spite of the immense probability against 
their being worth it. And it is, after all, the 
old books, the undoubtedly excellent books, 
which need to be championed. Most people 
are lazily content to give superiority its due 
of praise, but what is needed is a critic who 
shall spur them to the only truly laudatory 
action possible — that is, to read. Spenser's 
rank among English poets is high and incon- 
testable. The critic must make people read 
" The Faerie Queene." How few even well- 
read people do that ! The critic must show 
that " The Faerie Queene " is at least as im- 
portant, as interesting, as productive of 
pleasure, as the ephemeral things upon which 
we spend ourselves in vain. Mere superiority 
of knowledge, it is evident, is not the only 
advantage the critic should possess. He must 
be an enthusiast. To scrape away at mile- 
248 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

posts, found in Yorkshire or on the Rhine, 
until the time-worn figures appear; to de- 
cipher them and show their meaning; to 
connect these mutilated and abbreviated words 
with the manifold throbbing life of imperial 
Rome, hundreds of leagues away and two 
thousand years ago — this sort of work de- 
mands faith and a degree of glorious mad- 
ness which is akin to genius. Such is the 
office of the literary critic. 

Sainte-Beuve not only saved many seven- 
teenth-century writers from comparative ob- 
livion, but he confirmed the reputation of 
Bossuet and Saint-Simon, of Fenelon and La 
Fontaine, of Madame de Sevigne and Pascal. 
During half a century already, the; best 
French authors have been more read than 
they would have been without his learned, 
skilful, and enthusiastic insistence on their 
interest, their charm, their importance. This 
is his clearest title to fame. If more humble, 
possibly, it is a more solid reputation than 
any he could have won as poet or novelist. 
His generation was rich in poets and nov- 
elists, but would have been poor without him 
in men of sound taste, capable of appealing 
effectually to the standards of experience. 
He enlarged the comprehension of the word 
249 



SAINTE-BEUVB 

" classic," by including in it many works of 
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth 
centuries, which were practically unknown 
in 1830, and indicating their excellent feat- 
ures. He made new divisions and dis- 
covered hidden relationships. One of his 
favorite ideas, for example, is that a pecu- 
liar quality of urbanity and distinction is to 
be found in the writings of the generation 
which flourished in the first quarter of the 
eighteenth century, so that even the minor 
letter-writers and memoir-writers of that 
period, the period of Voltaire's youth, have 
a singular gift of grace. And while he does 
ample justice to most of the authors of the 
earlier and greater era, it is the writers of 
the Regency in whose resuscitation he most 
delights. Never before and never after, are 
there such limpidity of style, such perfect 
ease, and crystalline perfection, as in Lesage, 
Vauvenargues, Madame du Deffand, the Abbe 
Pr6vost, Fontenelle. Vauvenargues and Ma- 
dame du Deffand would have been but little 
known at present, out of France at least, if 
Sainte-Beuve had not insisted on their worth. 
Many persons on reading the Causeries 
are disappointed to find so little indication 
of system, or rather of a system. " This is 
250 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

not criticism, " they exclaim ; " this is history, 
if you will, but not criticism." They are 
quite right. It is not criticism as a German 
professor would understand the term. It is 
not a philosophy of literature. The Caus- 
eries are quiet, familiar, unpretending talks, 
and rather gossipy, as the word indicates. 
And the only trace of a method in them is 
Sainte-Beuve's constant practice of letting 
each author speak for himself as much as 
possible. He does not use his authors as 
mere texts illustrative of some already- 
formed theory. " I am of those who quote," 
he says, "and who are not content until they 
have cut out from their author a good big 
piece, a fine specimen." He acts on the 
principle that it ought to be enough to place 
an intelligent man in the presence of a work 
of genius ; he will appreciate it without much 
urging. A little modest guidance, some re- 
constitution of the milietiy the explanation 
of difficulties, and the pointing out of a few 
details of beauty which might otherwise es- 
cape observation — this is usually the proper 
extent of a critic's duties. It is tiresome to 
be told just how and why we should be 
impressed. A doctrinaire never appears so 
small, nor his system so foolish, as in the 
251 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

presence of a clear, strong, simple man of 
genius. Such was Sainte-Beuve's theory and 
such his practice. 

He has been much criticised for his habit 
of making an author's personality and life a 
basis for judging his works. And at first 
sight this appears a proceeding of doubtful 
wisdom. But let us see how he conducts the 
investigation. He assumes that into a novel 
or a poem or a drama an author does throw 
his own personality, and that books are ac- 
tions. It would be a waste of time, therefore, 
not to go direct to the heart of an author's life, 
if we can, rather than shut ourselves up to 
the consideration of only one phase of his 
activity. In the end his character will inevi- 
tably be disclosed, even through a single 
work. Why should we not avail ourselves of 
any short path which leads to his personality, 
and thus anticipate the sure, but often slow, 
operation of time? Knowing, for instance, 
the personal insufficiency of Chateaubriand, 
Sainte-Beuve felt that it would be exercising 
too much patience to wait until that insuffi- 
ciency was also detected by the public in all 
the sentimentalist's vaunted books. It must 
be in the books, for it was in the man, and 
sooner or later a man is revealed, with more 
252 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

or less completeness, in his productions. So 
he did not scruple to tell what he knew of 
Chateaubriand as he had seen and heard him. 
With even less hesitation did he seek to dis- 
cover the personality of men and women not 
his contemporaries. It is to this fondness 
for detailed portraiture that we are indebted 
for the charming and useful biographies 
which so many of the Causeries contain. 
Each author tells his own life, and so far as 
possible in his own words, which are sup- 
ported or corrected by extracts from the 
letters and journals of his acquaintances. 
Sainte-Beuve's vast knowledge of memoirs, 
both published and in manuscript, was sup- 
plemented by the reading of his secretaries, 
whom he kept employed in the public li- 
braries of Paris. And much of his feeling 
for the eighteenth century, a feeling which 
strikes us as so fresh and immediate, much of 
his information about the lives of Andre de 
Chenier, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Rousseau, 
Franklin, Walpole, Gibbon, Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse, Madame d'Epinay, and the En- 
cyclopedists, came to him by oral tradition. 
To mention only one of several lines of com- 
munication open to him, he was for some 
time a frequenter of Madame R6camier's 
2 53 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

salon. She had known in her youth the 
society of the Consulate, and through it that 
of the reign of Louis XVI. 

Thus we see that Sainte-Beuve's method, 
which has been often attacked on the ground 
that it is too much concerned with personal- 
ity, is in reality the simplest and most natural 
method in the world. He lets his authors 
show themselves and speak their own lan- 
guage. He re-animates an ancient salon, a 
group of friends, a family and its connections. 
He puts us in a position to judge authors as 
their contemporaries must have judged them, 
that is, partly from knowledge of their char- 
acters and habits. He corrects, of course, 
this sometimes too narrow view by consider- 
ing the author's works in a more abstract 
way, availing himself of distance and the 
lapse of time, which have their advantages. 

But it may be said very truly that all this 
which I have called his method is only a 
matter of arrangement. In the writings of 
other great critics there is a more intimate 
procedure which may also be termed method, 
that is to say, the execution of some didactic 
purpose, the application of some philosophi- 
cal principle. We seek almost in vain for 
such a thread of design in Sainte-Beuve's 
254 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

work. It seems as if he were satisfied to 
bring together other minds, without intruding 
his own opinions. He has been singularly 
successful in effacing himself, in not revealing 
his prejudices, or even his principles. He 
does not always judge a book or an author. 
He exhibits; sometimes he interprets too, 
but not always. He is ofter. satisfied to draw 
no conclusions after presenting a mass of 
testimony which he must have labored long 
to accumulate. To persons in search of deci- 
sions made for them by an authority, Sainte- 
Beuve is baffling and unsatisfactory. But if 
he were different he would not hold his 
unique position. His Causeries instead of 
being chats would be essays. Their buoy- 
ancy, their conversational quality, their mod- 
eration, their stimulus to curiosity would be 
gone. Taine's critical bias, which is to make 
literary and political history illustrate a posi- 
tivist theory of the universe, attributing the 
variations of genius and character to material 
causes, such as climate and soil — Taine's 
critical bias, w T hich at first seems to tend 
towards such sound conclusions, leads fre- 
quently into error, and has the further dis- 
advantage of making him here and there a 
tedious writer. Nisard's history of French liter- 
2 55 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

ature, to mention only one monumental failure, 
might have been the best work on that sub- 
ject, if the author had not sacrificed his book 
and half the French authors to a philosophi- 
cal theory. He presupposed a typical French- 
man, a typical French style, and a typical 
French spirit, and estimated all French liter- 
ature according to its conformity to these 
ideals. The system is false in its results, for 
it stamps originality as aberration, and would, 
in my opinion, exclude, if rigorously applied, 
such a genius as Rousseau, who had little 
in common with any conceivable type of a 
representative Frenchman. It is a system 
which no man of imagination could have 
clung to long, though a man of imagination 
might have invented it. Nisard had an hon- 
est, but inflexible, mind. Sainte-Beuve says 
of him : " He never abandons himself to 
the current of the artist-natures whom he 
encounters. " 

Sainte-Beuve, then, is not hampered with 
philosophical prepossessions. But this is not 
altogether an advantage, for one could wish 
that he were at times more frank in his judg- 
ments of literary values, and particularly 
that he more frequently disclosed his own 
opinion on points of morality. In short, one 
256 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

feels that he shirks a plain duty and fails to 
grasp an opportunity. One suspects that 
the constitutional cowardice imputed to him 
by his biographers has something to do 
with this. Towards the close of his life his 
indifference to moral distinctions is fairly 
cynical, and is doubtless due in part to prac- 
tical defiance of a moral obligation in his own 
conduct. How he could help being more 
pronounced, it is hard to see. To most of us 
it is unsatisfactory to read much in any field, 
passing in review a long list of men and 
women, of actions and ideas, without co- 
ordinating and speculating. We do need 
some philosophical thread. We are not long 
content with the mere accumulation of facts ; 
we must draw conclusions. And one feels 
disappointed sometimes that a man so well 
furnished with facts is so seldom disposed to 
aid in the fulfilment of this natural desire. 
Sainte-Beuve admits his reluctance. " I am 
a man of doubts and repentances," he ex- 
claims. In the generous Causerie in which 
he welcomes a fellow-critic, Edmond Scherer, 
then knocking for admittance to the Parisian 
world, Sainte-Beuve says of him, as if accept- 
ing the contrast : " He does not feel his way ; 
he does not hesitate. He is a firm, solidly- 
17 257 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

based intelligence, which has in itself a stan- 
dard whereby to measure exactly every other 
intelligence. He is a peer, rendering verdicts 
upon his peers. He is a veritable judge." 

In matters of taste and style Sainte-Beuve 
has himself the trenchant confidence of deci- 
sion which he remarks in his young rival. 
But Scherer's boldness was in another sort of 
judgment He had just published his " Mel- 
anges de Critique religieuse," which included 
essays on authors whom Sainte-Beuve would 
have considered in his province too, such as 
Joseph de Maistre and Taine, but whom he 
would scarcely have cared or dared to dis- 
cuss from a definite position in philosophy 
and religion, as Scherer did. Sainte-Beuve 
doubted the ability of the French public to 
appreciate the serious treatment habitual to 
Scherer, and, with a sort of gran rifinto which 
is painful reading, betrayed his own distaste 
for any criticism which attempts to go be- 
neath the surface of life. It is characteris- 
tic of timid people to under-estimate the 
courage of others. Sainte-Beuve's tone in 
this Causerie is just a little that of a bou- 
levardier revenu de tons les prejuges. One 
grows weary, in the end, of the French habit 
of shunning serious conversation. A man 
258 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

may be devoid of theory and yet be capable 
of rendering very valuable judgments. One 
would be grateful to Sainte-Beuve for more 
of them. The unfortunate aspect of his ab- 
stention from deciding points which he, better 
than any other man, was qualified to settle, 
is apparent when he passes over, without 
condemnation, the ruinous corruptions of 
the age of Louis XIV. For example, he gives 
us a portrait of Mademoiselle de la Valliere 
which, if uncorrected by other reading, might 
make us believe that she was in all respects a 
pure, high-minded woman, and one of the 
loveliest ornaments of an innocent and noble 
era. Not that I think every historian of liter- 
ature is called upon to extract a moral from 
the lives of his authors. But Sainte-Beuve's 
position was peculiar and his duty obvious. 
He was making the men and women of let- 
ters from 1 66 1 to 171 5 live over again for 
the benefit of a generation which, as he de- 
clared, needed standards of life. By touch- 
ing lightly upon evils whose existence and 
whose tainted and contaminating results he 
well knew, he failed to represent seventeenth- 
century life as it really was, in France, and 
the standard loses its authority. He should 
have had the courage to publish boldly his 
259 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

opinion of the enormous corruption of a 
reign whose greatness has been over-estimated, 
not without harm to the French character. 
Like most other French critics and historians, 
he caressed so daintily these false ideas that 
if we had not Saint-Simon to tell us the truth, 
we might miss the whole point of the timely 
and necessary revolt which began with the 
eighteenth century. 

Alluding to the subjects of his lectures in 
the ficole normale, from 1857 to i86i,Sainte- 
Beuve makes a distinction which he has hap- 
pily not always observed, between his work 
as a teacher and his work as a critic. The 
two offices are quite distinct, he says, " the 
critic's being, above all things, the search 
for what is new and the discovery of talent; 
the teacher's, the maintenance of tradition, 
and the conservation of taste." Yet it is 
worthy of remark that most of the sub- 
jects of his Causeries and Portraits were 
chosen without reference to works which had 
been recently published. Less than half the 
Causeries du Lundi are book-reviews. In 
his practice as critic he was performing more 
than ever the duty which he lays down as 
that of a teacher ; he was maintaining tradi- 
tion and conserving taste. 
260 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

His selections appear at first sight singular. 
In the fifteen volumes of the " Causeries du 
Lundi," there is not one essay on Moliere or 
Corneille or Racine; but, there are two on 
Bussy-Rabutin, three on Madame de Main- 
tenon, two on Dangeau, two on the Marquis 
d'Argenson, and two on Madame du Deffand, 
while the company of courtiers and world- 
lings is further increased by single Causeries 
on the nieces of Mazarin, Saint Evremond 
and Ninon de TEnclos, Mademoiselle de la 
Valliere, Hamilton, author of the " Memoires 
de Grammont," Madame de Caylus, Chaulieu, 
La Fare, the Duchess of Maine, and Madame 
de Pompadour. The persons whom Sainte- 
Beuve most delights to introduce are those 
who not only have written, but have made 
some stir in the world by their swords or 
their tongues or their bright eyes. The 
more serious side of court life is, however, 
not neglected. Indeed Sainte-Beuve has 
seldom gone deeper into detail than regard- 
ing Bossuet, to whom he dedicates three 
of the Causeries du Lundi, and Fenelon, 
whom he discusses in two. On the whole, if 
you look through the entire series of Lundis 
and Nouveaux Lundis, you will be struck 
with the large proportion of persons who 
261 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

were more celebrated for other things than 
for literary achievement. This is one of the 
most attractive and valuable features of the 
Causeries; they furnish the environment of 
the great French authors. We are admitted 
into the best circles of intellectual French 
society, in which Boileau and Racine, Fene- 
lon and La Fontaine once moved, and by 
which the character of their work was con- 
ditioned. It is remarkable also how largely 
the cultivation of letters under Louis XIV. 
was confined to the aristocracy. Of course 
the exceptions will occur to every one. But 
numerically the advantage is on the side of 
the nobility. Moreover, when a bourgeois, 
like Regnard, made himself distinguished, he 
was quickly admitted into court circles. 

I dare not fail to quote here two para- 
graphs from Sainte-Beuve, which are models 
of simple, compact French, and models also 
of a sort of feminine grace in avoiding a 
difficulty. They stand at the head of the 
Causerie for Monday, July 8, 1850, on 
Madame du Chatelet. Nothing could be 
more delicately expressed. He makes one 
feel that it is scarcely fair to blame him for a 
defect to which he is not blind himself, and 
about which he can reason so delightfully. 
262 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

" I must say a few words of explanation in 
reply to more than one question put to me in 
various ways. What is my purpose in re- 
turning with such pleasure, in my Causeries, 
to these seventeenth and eighteenth century 
subjects? Is it my aim to propose them as 
models? Not precisely; but I wish, above 
all things, to aid in maintaining the line of 
tradition, without which nothing is possible 
in good literature; and so what is simpler 
than to try to fasten tradition to the last link 
of the chain? Even if many things were 
already corrupted at the end of the seven- 
teenth century and throughout the eighteenth, 
the language at least was still good; prose 
especially was yet excellent when it was 
Voltaire or his near neighbors who spoke or 
wrote. I wish therefore that we could be 
carried, that I myself, first of all, could be 
carried, back to the reign of that clear, simple, 
fluent language. I would that in commerce 
with these witty men and women of a cen- 
tury ago we might learn to converse as they 
used to converse — with sprightliness, with 
politeness, if that be possible, and without 
too much emphasis. One of the defects of 
newly-constituted societies (which have their 
good qualities, to be sure) is to wish to date 
263 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

from themselves alone, is to be disdainful of 
the past, is to be fond of system, and conse- 
quently rude and inflexible, or even a trifle 
fierce. I should like to see our younger 
generation cultivate and modulate themselves, 
and acquire, little by little, this simpler style, 
these lively and facile expressions, which 
used to be reputed the only truly French 
form. As for the morality of the eighteenth 
century, there are many cases in which I 
censure it. If there are some readers (and I 
think I know some) who would prefer to see 
me censure it oftener and more roundly, I 
beg them to observe that I succeed much 
better by provoking them to condemn it 
themselves than by taking the lead and seem- 
ing to try to impose a judgment of my own 
every time. In the long run, if a critic does 
this he always wearies and offends his readers. 
They like to think themselves more severe 
than the critic. I leave them that pleasure. 
For me, it is enough if I recount and depict 
things faithfully, so that every one may profit 
from the intellectual substance and the good 
language, and be in a position to judge for 
himself the other, wholly moral, parts. These, 
however, I am careful not to conceal. " 

It is evident from all the quotations I have 
264 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

made, as it is patent on every page of his 
works, that Sainte-Beuve was a classicist, a 
conservative, that he felt the dignity and 
beauty of the past and acknowledged its 
authority. He was keenly alive to fine 
shades of difference. He had the aristo- 
cratic instinct, and preferred the best to 
the second best, the noble to the common, 
the interests of a select few to the interests 
of the mass. There are well-bred books, just 
as there are men of born distinction. The 
republic of letters is not a very happy phrase 
if it is supposed to imply the equality of 
books. What we see is, rather, an aristoc- 
racy ruling triumphant over middle class 
and lower class alike. It is a hereditary 
system, too, and the descent of books, at 
least of those which belong to the most 
powerful families, can be traced for many 
generations. Does any one suppose that the 
fables of La Fontaine are without ancestry? 
They may not show their family quarterings, 
but in the literary herald's office their line- 
age is duly recorded. Of the prolific race 
which came down from remote ages through 
the Decameron, who can number the off- 
spring? That lively blood betrays itself in 
Chaucer and tells again in Shakespeare. In 
265 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

the world of books it is no disgrace to be a 
tuft-hunter. 

Stronger than the most selfish parasite's 
fondness for a duke, is Sainte-Beuve's in- 
stinct for a grand or an elegant style. He 
has wonderful facility, also, in detecting what- 
ever is unnatural or false. His favorite de- 
vice for disabusing his readers of exaggerated 
respect for any book was to quote some vio- 
lent or sentimental passage from it, some 
strained metaphor, some weak or preten- 
tious phrase, and then ask if Voltaire could 
have used such language, or if the simple 
diction and polished thought of Madame de 
Sevigne were not preferable. He employed 
this process very effectually against Chateau- 
briand. But sometimes it was not adequate, 
and he occasionally did injustice to a man of 
peculiar genius, as we have seen in the case 
of Musset. And he entirely failed to appre- 
ciate Balzac. It could hardly be expected 
that such a lover of classical perfection, such 
a lover of form, should approve of Balzac's 
style, which is often overstrained. The critic 
was repelled also, as delicate souls will always 
be, by the want of real gentility in Balzac's 
thought. There is much of it that is impos- 
ing, but nothing that is distinguished. As in 
266 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

his life, so in his creations, and pre-eminently 
in that most intimate of all a man's creations, 
his style, there is something monstrous, un- 
couth, something which betrays a lack of re- 
finement. Social intercourse of the right sort 
will sometimes produce sufficient polish, even 
where the man is low-born or naturally rude, 
and Balzac was neither. But he did not 
enjoy early enough the advantages of com- 
panionship and friendship. Sainte-Beuve 
could not but be shocked by Balzac's curi- 
ous combination of insufficiencies and ex- 
cesses. He did injustice to the sincerity 
of his character. And the naturalist school 
will never forget that Sainte-Beuve, thus 
rendered blind to Balzac's power, also failed 
to see in him the great novelist, the greatest 
novelist of France. For all his eccentrici- 
ties, Balzac w r as, of course, no charlatan. He 
did his share of posing, but he was, of course, 
no mountebank. It is a pity he could not 
have had Sainte-Beuve for a friend and taken 
his advice in matters of form, at least. But 
it is also to be regretted that Sainte-Beuve 
underestimated the tide-like sweep of that 
great talent. 

From the persons and books he disliked, 
it is apparent that Sainte-Beuve's especial 
267 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

antipathy was for declamation, the sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbals of discourse, v the 
oratorical habit, the love of mere rhetoric, 
the want of simplicity, excess of emphasis, 
or to sum up all in his own word, la phrase. 
This he considered the worst element of bad 
style, and a sure indication of vulgar taste. 

As a true disciple of the prose writers of 
that chosen period of his, the end of the 
seventeenth and the beginning of the eigh- 
teenth century, Sainte-Beuve is annoyed by 
vagueness, and his own works are marvel- 
lously clear. He is more concrete than is 
usual with critics. He has the precision 
of a fencer, with all a fencer's grace. He 
has the French faculty for fine insinuation. 
His Causeries read like skilful conversa- 
tions; they abound in delicate approaches 
and feigned withdrawals. His good-humor 
and self-command are well-nigh perfect. His 
flashes of indignation are so rare as to be 
always welcome. But he is for the most 
part imperturbable, serene. Not many men, 
having to write a piece of literary criticism 
once a week for half a life-time, would 
have developed so few crotchets and re- 
frained so entirely from arbitrary or tyranni- 
cal judgments. 

268 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

Despite his vast and minute information, 
there is in Sainte-Beuve no mere pedantry 
of letters, no boasting of mere research. He 
does not throw up barriers of erudition be- 
tween the reader and the author who is 
under discussion, but tries, rather, to remove 
every obstruction. He does not think it 
beneath his dignity to sketch broad, popular 
outlines of the lives and works of his sub- 
jects. He is never content with furnishing 
a mass of recondite facts. In each of his 
sketches you can refresh your knowledge 
of the author who is being criticised. It 
is not, as a rule, taken for granted that 
even the main features of his life will be 
known to you. Sainte-Beuve treats these 
elementary matters with a patient enthusi- 
asm, an originality, a charm of language, 
which make them always fresh and delight- 
ful. Thus one of the first effects he pro- 
duces is to acquaint the reader personally 
with a man or a woman. 

He somewhere uses the words savant and 
erudit in such a way as to show the beautiful 
distinction between them. A man may be 
Erudit and stuffed with learning, yet it may 
be all congested in his brain, and he but a 
crude scholar. A savant, on the other hand, 
269 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

has better possession of his faculties and 
knows how to open his treasures to the 
world. Knowledge will not swamp a man, 
unless he be deficient in active energy — or 
power of expression, which is almost the 
same thing. Sainte-Beuve was distinctly 
savant. He is neither a scientist nor a phil- 
ologist in his treatment of literature ; he is a 
man of letters. His solicitude is that he 
may interest us in the literary aspect of 
French history — the influence of personal 
character upon books, and the effect of 
books upon the national life. It remains 
for a more philosophical mind to interest 
us equally in the historical aspect of French 
literature. 

It is natural to expect of a critic so in- 
timately acquainted with these details that 
he should, at least towards the end of his 
career, draw valuable conclusions as to the 
distinguishing qualities of the French race, 
and the relative value of its intellectual 
product. Sainte-Beuve answers but insuffi- 
ciently this expectation. We find among 
his works a small number of essays on for- 
eign authors. They show that he possessed 
breadth of sympathy and capacity for accom- 
modation. But they are relatively few, and 
270 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

moreover they nearly all treat of writers who 
had a large share of the French spirit, and 
lived much in France, or wrote in French. 
Such are Lord Chesterfield, Benjamin Frank- 
lin, Gibbon, and Frederick the Great. No 
history of French literature would be com- 
plete if it failed to take account of these. 
Sainte-Beuve is still, therefore, in his origi- 
nal circle when he speaks of them. To be 
sure, he has essays on Goethe, Dante, Fir- 
dousi, Theocritus, Virgil, and Pliny the 
Elder, but yet it must be said that he does 
not abound in those rich comparisons be- 
tween different literatures which constitute 
much of the value of Arnold's critical writ- 
ings and Schlegers. In this he is a true 
Frenchman, for his countrymen are none 
too hospitable to foreign ideas and none 
too well acquainted with other literatures 
than their own. They are, after all, much 
more insular than their neighbors across the 
Channel. When Sainte-Beuve does, however, 
venture upon comparisons > he shows an 
admirable catholicity of spirit, and we can 
only regret that he so seldom let his mind 
go forth on foreign travel. From the rare 
excursions he allowed it to make, it returned 
with booty characteristic of the lands it had 
271 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

traversed. Thoroughly French though he 
was, and limited by some French prejudices, 
his essay on Cowper, for example, proves 
that he could appreciate an English type of 
intelligence absolutely foreign to his country- 
men — incomprehensible to many of them. 
In reading this Causerie one feels that per- 
haps Sainte-Beuve's practice of abstaining 
from international comparison does not in- 
dicate lack of knowledge or appreciation on 
his part, so much as on the part of the 
public for which he wrote. It is chiefly 
when thinking of this restraint and of what 
we lose by it, that one regrets the peculiar 
circumstances of his authorship. 

For after all, and it is not a reproach, we 
must conclude that Sainte-Beuve was a jour- 
nalist, and that although his success was 
made possible by his close contact with the 
public, it was also limited thereby. Fortu- 
nately the roots of his development were 
struck in academic rather than bohemian 
soil. He won his great and unique celebrity 
by happily combining in himself the pro- 
fessor, the journalist, and the man of the 
world. Other men in his situation com- 
monly suffer an abasement of their talent 
and a levelling of their style. In him the 
272 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

more solid elements of the mind strength- 
ened with years, and there is little of an 
ephemeral character in his work. From the 
very limitations of his position he gained 
advantage, for to whom would he be so 
useful if his flights were longer or his range 
more general? He is so close to his hearers 
and in such an easy attitude that it would be 
ridiculous for him to sermonize or prate. 
So he simply talks — in the first person 
singular, as if seated with a group of listeners 
around a table full of books. He speaks 
with an easy and well-bred familiarity, with 
vividness and endless variety. It is a lively, 
instructive, polite conversation, on the many 
forms of his subject, for he had but one, 
and that is French literature. To study 
this, to purify, propagate, and defend this 
is his great concern. 

What shall be, then, our final word about 
the utility of Sainte-Beuve's criticisms? In 
the first place, and whatever else may not be 
said, he furnished an easy approach to almost 
every French author of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, and reconstructed, with 
much charm and truth, many literary and 
social groups, from the H6tel de Rambouillet 
to the salon of Madame Recamier. He 
18 273 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

checked the engouement of his contempo- 
raries for Chateaubriand and Lamartine, 
who were being elevated to a position of 
authority which was not theirs by right. 
He in the main judged soberly of Hugo and 
Beranger, and steadied, if he did not stop, 
their oscillations before an altogether too 
complacent public. He was more severe 
with Musset than even Time himself has 
been. His sense of proportion and love of 
restraint blinded him to the heroism of Bal- 
zac's titanic struggles, while he justly cried 
out against the unsound literary taste and 
the often grotesque style of the great novel- 
ist, who made upon his sensibilities much 
the same impression a lifter of weights at a 
fair produces upon the nerves of a delicate 
woman. In opposing his criticisms to Bal- 
zac's popularity, Sainte-Beuve was attempting 
to check the ocean-tide, and this is his only 
notable failure to appreciate genius. What 
he was unable to do with respect to Balzac, 
he accomplished very sympathetically in the 
case of George Sand. He was one of the 
first to celebrate the irresistible charm of 
her warm and generous speech, strong and 
sweet as the sunlight. But after all, if it is 
only to award praise or blame among con- 
, 274 



SAINTE-BEUVE 

temporaries that critics write, they may often 
do well to spare their pains, as the examples 
of Balzac and Musset show. Useful as it fre- 
quently is, such work is not of incontestable 
value. An incomparably greater office of 
criticism is to establish the reputation of the 
few supreme writers, no matter of what age 
or in what tongue, to smooth the way up to 
them, and allure men into their august and 
benign presence. 



2 75 



BALZAC 



277 



BALZAC 

The acts of a human being are memorable 
in so far as they benefit mankind. Some 
of these are acts of conscious devotion, and 
they are the noblest. Others are performed 
for the pleasure of doing things well. In all 
cases, usefulness to the world is the stand- 
ard by which the world judges. Works of 
art are no exception. Indeed, works of art 
are simply the most notable examples of dis- 
interested effort to be useful. Art for the 
world's sake is the only art the world cher- 
ishes. The self-pleasing fancies of the 
dilettante are short-lived. The esoteric dis- 
tinctions of cliques and schools make us say 
of a book or a picture that it is provincial 
or pedantic or affected. What unfailingly 
marks the highest products of great artists 
is the quality of being permanently service- 
able. Very little poetry that still passes 
for such was written with any other inspira- 
tion. But it is a question whether equal 
disinterestedness has presided over the writ- 
ing of more than a small number of novels. 
279 



BALZAC 

Immediate personal profit, in the shape of 
reputation or money, has not often been 
attainable by writing poetry, and poets have 
generally looked rather towards fame, which 
is the reward for priceless and imperishable 
service only. On the other hand, fortunes 
have been made by novelists, and against 
the eighteen pounds paid for "Paradise 
Lost " and the salt-savored bread which 
Dante ate, we have the $80,000 earned by 
Victor Hugo with "Les Miserables," and 
the $120,000 earned by Benjamin Disraeli 
with "Endymion" and "Lothair." 

Balzac is the greatest French novelist. 
One-third or one-half of the best French 
novels are his; and from him dates nearly 
all that is excellent in the theory and prac- 
tice of his successors. Since his day the 
men who have done most for the art of fic- 
tion in France, the men who have developed 
it and kept it vital, have been his disciples. 
He expressly formulated, and on many a 
page he illustrated, an unimpeachable doc- 
trine of realism. Fidelity to the truth as 
derived by actual observation, or capable of 
being tested by observation — this, Balzac 
taught, is an indispensable quality in a 
novelist. He is the greatest French novel- 



BALZAC 

ist, but wrote some of the most inartistic 
books in all French literature. He was the 
father of the realists; yet, for many of his 
works his sons are tempted to disown him. 
Moreover, he conceived and carried out, to 
an astonishing extent, the idea of repre- 
senting in fiction the life of his time in 
France, so that no essential feature should 
be lacking; and he did all this in such wise 
that the picture, though complete in almost 
every feature — - complete beyond praise and 
beyond parallel in literature or any other art 
- — is a distortion of the truth ! 

There are two keys to this enigma. One 
is a certain imperfection in the man. The 
other is a certain peculiarity of the times in 
which he lived. In the man two incompat- 
ible natures struggled for mastery. He was 
one of those composite characters in whom 
the conflict of opposite tendencies does not 
produce a resultant of forces, but each oper- 
ates alternately. By virtue of his better 
nature, he was a great genius, original, 
courageous, industrious, disinterested, and 
possessed also of those secondary charms 
and graces which often accompany the 
noblest gifts. When this nature prevailed, 
there was no meanness in the man, and 
281 



BALZAC 

especially no weakness; he was generous, 
buoyant, clear-sighted, a thorough artist, 
felicitous in thought and word. But when 
the noble part of him was in abeyance, when 
desire for quick recognition and great wealth 
was uppermost, Balzac presented but the vul- 
gar type of a man living selfishly. 

When the artist-nature, weary with the 
day's work, or despairing of perfection, laid 
down the pen to recuperate, this coarser 
spirit would often take it up and write 
abominably, to make money. The money- 
maker, being the less scrupulous writer, was 
less easily tired, and filled many pages in 
these stolen intervals; his hand was heavy, 
his wit coarse; he had no taste. Hard, 
unenlightened, rationalistic, declamatory, a 
Parisian shop-keeper endimanche, the com- 
mercial Balzac was responsible for the want 
of distinction which has been so often re- 
marked in the great master. And for what- 
ever want of fidelity to truth has been 
remarked in him, for this also the commer- 
cial Balzac was in large measure respon- 
sible. What did the commercial nature 
care for theory? What does " business " 
ever care for theory? In theory Balzac was 
a realist, and most of his greatness comes 

282 



BALZAC 

from his being, in the main, nobly faithful 
to his theory. Where he departs from the 
truth as capable of being tested by obser- 
vation, he occasionally startles us with a 
strange exhibition of spiritual insight, but 
more frequently falls miserably below his 
own level of interest and style. Laying aside 
the figure of a dual-nature in Balzac, we may 
say that he was a man who saw the truth and 
wrote the truth like a sublime artist, except 
when he yielded to a temptation to which 
he was peculiarly liable, and set the love of 
money before the love of serving the world, 
or the love of doing great things well. 

Leaving out of account the anecdotes, 
probably in large part legendary, which his 
biographers have seen fit to record in place 
of much-desired fact, and making what use 
we can of his sister's brief and charmingly 
indulgent sketch, and of his published let- 
ters, and his various portraits, we may gather 
some idea of Balzac as he was in early man- 
hood, and again twenty years later. The 
former is the critical point with him. Here, 
for the last time, we may perceive his orig- 
inal disposition, and with this in mind we 
may estimate the influence over him which 
external things came to exert. 
2S3 



BALZAC 

In 1 8 19 the young Balzac, aged twenty, 
and enjoying for the first time the pleasures 
of independence, wrote home from his attic 
in Paris, in this gay strain: "Ah, sister, 
what torments does the love of glory not 
inflict! Hurrah, then, for the grocers, for 
they sell goods all day, count their gains at 
night, finding relaxation from time to time 
in a dreadful melodrama — and are happy. 
Yes, but they spend their lives amid cheese 
and soap. So let us rather cry, Hurrah for 
men of letters ! Well, but they are poor of 
purse and rich only in pride. So come, 
then, leave both alone, and Hurrah for 
everybody ! " 

And again the same brave whistling a few 
weeks later: "I have bad news to tell you 
about my housekeeping; my work is a foe to 
cleanliness. This rascal Myself" (a cheer- 
ful figment of his imagination, who attended 
to all the menial service) " is getting more 
and more negligent. He doesn't go down- 
stairs to buy provisions more than once in 
three or four days, and then patronizes the 
nearest and worst-stocked shops; the others 
are too far off and the fellow saves his steps; 
so your brother (destined to be so cele- 
brated !) is already nourished exactly like a 
284 



BALZAC 

great man; that is to say, he is starving." 
And a little later : " I feel to-day that wealth 
does not bring happiness, and that the time 
I am spending here will be for me a source 
of pleasant memories. Living as I please, 
working to suit my own taste and in my own 
way, doing nothing if I wish, dreaming on 
into the future, which I paint in rosy colors, 
thinking of you folks at home and know- 
ing you happy, having Rousseau's Julie for 
my mistress, La Fontaine and Moliere for 
friends, Racine for master, and the ceme- 
tery of Pere-Lachaise for my walking-ground 
— Oh, if this could only last forever ! " 

The boy whose spirits overflowed in these 
refreshing outbursts had been taught to ap- 
preciate freedom by a childhood of unusual 
repression. He was born in Tours, May 16, 
1799, and christened Honor6. He died at 
Paris, in 1850. His parents were in easy 
circumstances, and had him brought up by 
a peasant nurse in the country till he was 
four years old, and at seven sent him away 
again, to a boarding-school at Vend6me. 
Here he passed seven years without a vaca- 
tion, and, being a great reader and not a 
diligent scholar, and withal very unhappy, 
was accounted a dull boy. His health break- 
285 



BALZAC 

ing down, which is not surprising, he was 
taken out of school, and lived at home in 
Tours until the family, in 1814, removed to 
Paris. Here he attended private schools for 
about two years, and later heard lectures at 
the Sorbonne and the College de France. 
In his eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth 
years he read law and spent a twelvemonth 
each in the offices of a solicitor and a notary. 
His father saw a good opening for him in 
the legal profession and insisted on his prac- 
tising, but the young man rebelled. M. 
Balzac the elder, as one may gather, was a 
selfish, obstinate old man, with an idee fixe, 
that of preserving his health and living as 
long as possible. Honore persisted in his 
refusal, and at last wrung from his father 
permission to live alone in the city and try 
for a certain time the experiment of a liter- 
ary occupation. He was provided with a 
small allowance, and ordered to assume a 
false name and avoid being recognized. 
Meanwhile the family had removed to a 
suburban town. 

When Honor6 wrote the exuberant letters 

quoted above, he had therefore only one care 

in the world — to write something which 

should justify his course and secure his 

286 



BALZAC 

independence. His tone is natural, high- 
spirited, courageous. His ideal is pure, 
his heart uncorrupted. "My only grief," 
he exclaims, " is the small amount of talent 
I discover in myself. . . . All the toil in the 
world cannot produce a spark of genius. . . . 
And mediocrity be hanged ! " The product 
of several months of ecstatic labor was a 
drama, "Cromwell," which failed to satisfy 
the family tribunal, and young Balzac spent 
most of the next seven or eight years under 
the parental roof and authority. But he 
won meanwhile a limited toleration by writ- 
ing stories which were paid for. He looked 
back, however, with bitterness, to a lonely 
childhood and a repressed youth, and in 1828 
he said : " From the harsh restraint in which 
I have lived I have acquired at least a wild 
sort of energy and a horror of the yoke, of 
which you can form no idea." The stories 
by writing which he partly emancipated him- 
self were published under various pseudo- 
nyms up to 1829. There were forty volumes 
of them! He perfectly well realized that 
they were valueless except in two respects : 
they brought him a little money and they 
enabled him to learn how not to write. 
In 1822, in the midst of this trying ap- 
287 



BALZAC 

prenticeship, he so far lost confidence in his 
genius, or was so led astray by belief in his 
business capacity, that he began to specu- 
late, and presently found himself the un- 
fortunate possessor of a printing-office, a 
type-foundry, a publishing-house, all bought 
on credit, and a quantity of unsalable books, 
popular editions he had made of Moliere and 
La Fontaine. From this time on, the com- 
mercial Balzac, to resume our figure, was an 
indispensable companion of Balzac the art- 
ist, and took advantage of the situation to 
thrust himself ever forward. The necessity 
of paying off debts gave undue importance 
to the trading instinct, which may have 
existed before in Balzac, but which till now 
had not been prominent. The scorn with 
which the trading-classes in France have 
always been regarded by the classes who are 
supposed to be above them, is not so diffi- 
cult to understand as a similar feeling in 
America would be. The lower French 
bourgeoisie, with many exceptions, of course, 
are hard, methodical, avaricious, inhospitable 
to ideas. They do not travel, they do not 
read, their interests do not extend beyond 
gain and physical comfort, and their sym- 
pathies are limited to their own families. 
288 



BALZAC 

All the bigotry of business is theirs. An 
unenlightened patriotism completes rather 
than modifies the selfishness of the men, and 
the women, for almost their sole impersonal 
interest, have recourse to a tread-mill round 
of formal religious observance. It has been 
said, with much apparent truth, that French 
men of letters and painters and sculptors 
speak disdainfully of the bourgeoisie because 
it is from the bourgeoisie they themselves 
have escaped. Unhappily the artist in 
Balzac never escaped the uncongenial yoke- 
fellow. Judging from his letters, the com- 
mercial aspects of novel-writing filled his 
mind almost to the exclusion of every other 
interest, except when he was actually en- 
gaged in composition. He knew no leisure. 
The harshness of his character, the crudity 
of his thought, are consequences of a raging 
activity which allowed no time for reflec- 
tion. The man and his work lack relief, 
harmony, ripeness. He had no time for ret- 
rospection, for friendship, for enjoying liter- 
ature. His life, from the turning-point in or 
about 1822, was one continual debauch of 
labor. Grinding toil subdued his manhood. 
A large part of his work is the production 
of a weary mind and lacks spontaneity. 
19 289 



BALZAC 

One characteristic citation from Balzac's 
later correspondence will suffice to show 
what a change came over him in twenty 
years, and how he was then struggling. In 
a letter to his sister, dated 1839, he writes: 
" I hope this week to have completed the 
famous payment, and even to have enough 
money to settle the most pressing smaller 
claims, leaving only about ten thousand 
francs unpaid. All is going well, and I 
shall have something to tell you Friday or 
Saturday. The Renaissance Theatre capitu- 
lates and offers me fifteen thousand francs 
in advance. I have finally brought them to 
these terms. . . . Last week I wrote fifty- 
five printed folios. I must do as much this 
week. I have slept only forty-five hours in 
ten days, but not without risk." There is 
little else in his letters of this period than 
such discourse as this, only it is often more 
feverish and sometimes acrimonious. And 
the ten thousand francs that stand between 
him and freedom have a way of suddenly 
increasing. With every smile of fortune 
he blossomed forth in fresh extravagances, 
bought more furniture, committed more fol- 
lies, borrowed more money, engaged himself 
more deeply with publishers. One who has 
290 



BALZAC 

recourse to Balzac's letters in the hope of 
learning the secrets of the novelist's art, or 
of breathing an atmosphere of noble thought, 
will be disappointed, but may acquire much 
information about notes of hand, compound 
interest, discounting, renewals of bills, con- 
tracts, and litigation. 

But what! we might say; shall we blame 
a man for trying, by every power with which 
he is endowed, to pay his debts ? Is it not 
esteemed honorable in Scott that he spent 
himself to be free from pecuniary obliga- 
tion? There are two kinds of difference, 
however, between Scott's attitude and Bal- 
zac's, in this matter, and at any rate, it is 
not so much the right or wrong we are con- 
sidering as the cause of certain imperfec- 
tions in Balzac's works. In the first place, 
Balzac differs from Scott in that he relished 
the excitement of business. We cannot 
altogether believe what he says on this sub- 
ject. He protests again and again that 
business is killing him, while apparently it 
is half his life, and half his pleasure. He 
was a speculator by instinct, and no sooner 
got his head above water than he plunged in 
again. Another difference is that Balzac's 
flashy tastes and luxurious habits were often 
291 



BALZAC 

responsible for his financial embarrassment. 
He was notorious for his extravagance, and 
for the barbaric splendor of his living. In 
these things Scott was a gentleman, and 
Balzac neither better nor worse than a 
French business man of the class whom 
French gentlemen despise or affect to 
despise. 

The time and place in which Balzac came 
to maturity have also much to do with his 
defects. From his sixteenth year he lived 
in an atmosphere of speculation, when large 
fortunes were being made, owing to the rise 
in French government bonds, and the gen- 
eral revival of business, coincident with the 
Restoration. In spite of the monarchical 
character of the restored government, many 
results of the Revolution were not seriously 
impaired, and the era was in reality demo- 
cratic, or rather plutocratic. Thousands of 
families from the lower orders of society, 
having had the prudence to invest their 
money in national funds between 1814 and 
1820, realized enormous profits, and so came 
into sudden prominence during the next 
decade, when securities were high. It was 
an era of peace, the first peace of consider- 
able length that France had known for a 
292 



BALZAC 

generation. It was also an era of inven- 
tion and discovery all over the world, an 
era of great industrial development; and 
the shrewd, frugal peasantry and bourgeoisie 
were able to employ their savings to advan- 
tage, for the rate of interest was high. 
Moreover, to a man of business instincts, to 
a novelist singularly curious about money 
dealings, it was, of all times, the best for 
observing the careers of dishonest people. 
There had been frightful peculation during 
the recent wars. The confiscation of Church 
property and of the estates of emigres, the 
contract system of supplying vast armies, 
and finally the abuses of royal favor in be- 
half of the restored nobility, had left a deep 
and mixed deposit of fraud on every side. 
It was not unreasonable to suspect a dishon- 
est origin for almost every fortune, great or 
small, in France. An observer might be 
excused for becoming cynical. A richer 
field for the social geologist never existed. 
Not only in this matter of wealth, but in 
regard to social elevation, marriage, titles 
of nobility, public offices, legitimacy of 
birth, sincerity of moral, religious, and 
political professions — all, in fine, that goes 
to make up the inner tissue and the outward 
293 



BALZAC 

show of security and success — men felt 
they were walking on hollow ground. 

It is evident that to a mind like Balzac's, 
in which the noble interest of an artist was 
inextricably complicated with vulgar curios- 
ity and personal greed, this mixture of the 
social strata must have proved inviting. He 
was attracted by the singular problems which 
the times presented, and also, unfortunately, 
by the opportunity he saw for enriching 
himself. Before him, although Voltaire had 
made large sums by his writings, and Beau- 
marchais had made money his chief concern, 
it is doubtful if any great French man of 
letters had seriously set about to gain a 
fortune by literature. The Encyclopedists 
were content to live, if necessary, in ex- 
treme privation, rather than turn their eyes 
from what seemed to them a sacred task. 
And the great writers of an earlier day, as 
well as many of Balzac's contemporaries, 
were of the noble caste or imbued with its 
traditions, which discountenanced trade. Of 
nobility, in the sense of rank, Balzac had 
none, notwithstanding the particle de which 
he had the presumption to assume. 

Balzac was the man to accept the chal- 
lenge of these circumstances and cope with 
294 



BALZAC 

these temptations. In bodily presence he 
might at first pass for insignificant. He 
was only five feet tall and was decidedly 
fat. His countenance lacked grace, benev- 
olence, and dignity. But power resided 
there, extraordinary, indubitable power. The 
broad, knotted forehead, the heavy eyebrows 
converging violently downward over the root 
of the nose, the flaming brown eyes, the 
pouting lips which rose at the corners, the 
small, well-moulded chin, spoke him a de- 
termined, self-confident man, and capable of 
profound concentration. It is a face from 
which humility is entirely absent, but one 
would hesitate to pronounce it irreverent. 
Curiosity sits at the window in his viva- 
cious eyes. Toil has bruised and swollen 
the space about them and drawn creases 
downward from his nostrils to his chin. 
Cheerful energy, not so much godlike as 
diabolical, smiles out from the lips. On 
those who knew him, his character made an 
impression in keeping with his face. They 
thought him strong, but not fine; jovial, but 
not witty ; terribly in earnest, but not noble. 
They tell us, with more or less innuendo or 
apology, that he was sensual, gross, vain, 
fatuous, and obstreperous; that his tastes 
295 



BALZAC 

were crude; that money was his idol. But 
they tell us too, and the world knows it 
without their testimony, that he cherished 
a high theory of the novelist's art; that 
before all things else he loved reality; that 
he worked unremittingly, as no other man 
of letters ever worked, harder than ordinary 
human flesh and soul can endure or should 
be expected to endure. 

This powerful but defectively organized 
being set for himself an extraordinary task, 
from which a more refined nature might have 
shrunk with apprehension of its difficulty or 
a keener sense of human weakness. It was 
no less than to reproduce, in a series of 
novels and stories, the totality of contem- 
porary French life. Human society, he 
said, contained several thousand types. Just 
as the different species that constitute the 
animal world may be represented by typi- 
cal specimens, so these human types sum 
up in themselves the varieties of mankind. 
"French society," he declared, "was to be 
the historian; I was to be only the secre- 
tary. In drawing up an inventory of the 
vices and virtues of society, collecting the 
principal facts about its passions, painting 
its characters, choosing its chief events, and 
296 



BALZAC 

composing types by uniting the features of 
several homogeneous characters, perhaps I 
could succeed in writing the history which 
has been neglected by so many historians, 
the history of manners and morals. With 
much patience and courage I should produce 
for nineteenth-century France that book 
which we all wish we possessed, and which 
Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, In- 
dia have unfortunately not bequeathed to us 
in regard to their civilizations." He con- 
tinues in the same confused style, embody- 
ing a kind of mysticism in terms drawn from 
the vocabulary of natural science, and with 
not a touch of humor or real humility, to say 
that the crown of his work shall be its phi- 
losophy. He will explain the universe. 
"By adhering to this strict reproduction, a 
writer might become a more or less faithful, 
more or less successful, patient, or courage- 
ous painter of the human types, might nar- 
rate dramas of the inner life, might be the 
archaeologist of social furniture, the nomen- 
clator of the professions, the registrar of 
good and evil; but if I would merit the 
praise to which every artist should aspire 
must I not study the reasons, or the reason, 
of these social effects, catch the meaning 
297 



BALZAC 

hidden in this immense concourse of fig- 
ures, passions, and events? Finally, after 
having sought, I will not say found, this 
reason, this social motive force, should I 
not be bound to meditate on the principles 
of nature and see in what respect societies 
conform to, or depart from, the eternal rule, 
the true, the beautiful? " 

Here was a programme which only a 
Frenchman could have formed. It is too 
complex, too systematic, too audacious, to 
have sprung from any other people. In its 
odd jargon of science, the Prospectus of the 
"Human Comedy," of which these words 
are the gist, is thoroughly characteristic of 
the second quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. What is Balzacian about it is that 
the promise was fulfilled! At least it was 
fulfilled far more completely than any other 
man could have fulfilled it, and abundantly 
enough indeed so far as quantity goes. And 
in such an undertaking, of course, quantity 
is as important, almost, as quality. The 
Prospectus was written in 1842, and referred 
not only to works then as yet unwritten, but 
to the best of what Balzac had previously 
published, since 1828. The ninety-two 
novels and shorter stories, and the five 
298 



BALZAC 

dramas, which constitute the vast work to 
which it stands as preface, are the " Human 
Comedy. " Only about one-half or two-fifths 
of Balzac's published writings come under 
this head. Yet the " Human Comedy " com- 
prises no less than ten thousand closely 
printed pages, in which more than two thou- 
sand persons figure. AD these characters 
have life. All have individuality. Many 
of them are intricate and subtle, being 
counted among the most complicated men 
and women in fiction. And a large number 
appear in two or more of the books, with- 
out, in any instance, losing consistency. 
The story-telling, or fabulation, is almost 
equally rich, though of less remarkable qual- 
ity, as compared with what other novelists 
have done. But in a third respect — with 
regard to the amount of intellectual food 
incidentally supplied in the shape of de- 
scriptions, reflections, and the like — the 
" Human Comedy " is wonderfully abundant. 
Even Scott and Tolstoi are thinly provided 
in comparison. The question may arise 
whether the individual narratives do not 
suffer rather than gain by this wealth of 
substance. Certainly, however, it is impor- 
tant as a contribution towards the object of 
299 



BALZAC 

the "Human Comedy," which was to make 
and explain an imaginary cross-section of 
French life in Balzac's day. 

Broadly considered, then, the "Human 
Comedy " comes marvellously near being 
what Balzac aimed to make it. It is the 
most astounding feat in literary history. 
The title suggests comparison with the 
" Divine Comedy " of Dante, and notwith- 
standing that the one is divine and the 
other flatly and unmistakably human, not- 
withstanding that the one is pure art and 
the other is art mixed with plain day-labor, 
there is some equality between the two in 
the mass and variety of life represented. 
Of course we must not expect to find the 
heady promise of the Prospectus fulfilled 
absolutely. There is a limit even to titanic 
powers, and we shall see that it is doubtful 
if, in the highest sense, it was fulfilled at 
all. For what though the details are abun- 
dant and in the main correct, if the total im- 
pression be spoiled by over-emphasis of the 
beautiful or the ugly, the good or the bad ? 
And in this matter of emphasis, of a just bal- 
ance between effects, of a broad experience 
of life truthfully expressed, the question of 
an artist's personality is everything. 
300 



BALZAC 

Let us not begin at the wrong end, 
and say that, because Balzac is known to 
have been a coarse, money-loving man, 
therefore his view of French life is false. 
What we know of his character is after all 
not very much. But it is reasonable to 
accept this little as an explanation, in part, 
of the generally acknowledged inadequacy of 
his work, in its total aspect. The specific 
defects have been noted by almost every 
reader who has published his observations. 
In fine, it is agreed that the moral color of 
the picture is too dark. Or, to test Balzac 
by his own standard, he has chosen a larger 
proportion of evil types than life really war- 
rants. The temptation is usually of the 
contrary sort, and Balzac is said to have 
been particularly severe, in his conversation, 
towards writers who had, as he expressed 
it, V hypocrisie du beau. He certainly did 
not err in that direction himself. Merely 
in numerical excess, let alone his manifest 
partiality for them, his rascals and charla- 
tans, his complex intriguers, his vicious and 
selfish women, have an unnatural advantage 
over the honest people. And this is not all, 
for it frequently happens that when he tries 
hardest to make a hero he makes a dandy, 
3 01 



BALZAC 

or a cad for a gentleman, or a person of very 
soiled and dubious virtue for a lady. His 
balance is unfair, for he was a pessimist; 
his tone is low, for he was unacquainted 
with the high levels of life, with real gen- 
tility, with simple, uncompromising moral- 
ity, with heart-felt religion. We are reduced 
to the paradoxical conclusion that the " Hu- 
man Comedy," while a feat of almost super- 
human difficulty and marvellously performed, 
is a failure as a picture of reality, although 
its strength lies in its realism. Critics of 
Balzac's own day were, with the exception 
of George Sand, not as much overcome by 
his power or convinced of his sagacity as 
most readers of our time are. Perhaps this 
is because we have seen so much genius, so 
much devoted talent, in his successors, pro- 
duce results that have never equalled the 
results he produced. Undoubtedly, too, we 
are less capable than the men of 1850 of 
appreciating the difference between life as 
it actually was in the first half of the cen- 
tury and life as Balzac depicted it. 

Happily, it is not necessary to read the 

whole of the "Human Comedy " in order to 

enjoy Balzac, though only by reading all of 

that huge work can we fully appreciate his 

302 



BALZAC 

enormous power and awful industry. Few 
of its component parts lose anything by 
being read separately. Many of them are 
superbly well executed; at least an equal 
number are among the dreariest, or the 
unloveliest, or the most profoundly immoral 
books in the French language. Taine, in 
his remarkable essay on Balzac, acknowl- 
edges that a great part of the " Human 
Comedy " is not such reading as a man of 
culture, accustomed to good society, and 
scrupulous as to whom he admits to inti- 
macy, would relish. But he makes the claim 
in Balzac's behalf that the reading habit has 
spread downward into the uncultivated and 
undiscriminating levels of society, and that 
Balzac is none too vulgar for the modern 
world. Conversation that would make the 
habitues of an eighteenth-century salon raise 
their eyebrows may be welcome enough, 
Taine says, in a men's club of the nineteenth 
century. This is a singular defence of Bal- 
zac's defects, for literature is not quite the 
same thing as social converse. We look to 
literature, even the least delicately nurtured 
of us, for something more interesting, nay, 
for something more elevated, than common 
events and common talk. Precisely here is 
303 



BALZAC 

the value of books, that they enable us to 
choose more refined or more remarkable or 
more lively company than life generally 
offers to any one of us. In his best books, 
Balzac has amply proved that novels which 
do this can nevertheless be written in strict 
conformity to every essential rule of real- 
ism. Moreover, those of his books that are 
likeliest to please a club-room of commer- 
cial travellers, or other specimens of Vhomrne 
sensuel nioyen, violate outrageously the real- 
istic principle of verisimilitude. 

The mob of fashionable libertines, police 
spies, sentimentally debauched duchesses 
and countesses, rich and marvellously beau- 
tiful actresses and courtesans, of shady 
bankers, picturesque usurers, bohemian act- 
ors, idle and diabolically clever journalists 
— all this gaudy riff-raff which whirls per- 
petually before us in the "Human Comedy, " 
spoiling half its novels, all these so-called 
Parisian types of the demi-monde and "high 
life " — Rastignac, Maxime de Trailles, 
Lousteau, la Palferine, Lucien de Rubem- 
pre, Ronquerolles, de Marsay, du Tillet, 
Felix de Vandenesse, Leon de Lora, des 
Lupeaulx, Nucingen, Magus, Gobseck, Na- 
than, Vautrin, Corentin, Peyrade, Florine, 
3°4 



BALZAC 

Florentine, Coralie, la duchesse de Mau- 
frigneuse, la vicomtesse de Beauseant — • 
these and a score of others like them are as 
improbable as they are depressing, not to 
say degrading. To contemplate their vices 
cannot refresh the spirits and improve the 
character even of Taine's imaginary club- 
man. But, indeed, they seem mere carica- 
tures of reality, and we are forced to suppose 
that even the great Balzac had his head 
turned by the glamour which, in the eyes of 
nearly all Frenchmen, emanates from peo- 
ple who are actually the silliest part of the 
population. Some of his novels must be 
accounted entire failures, because in them 
these figures, whom he dotes on, predomi- 
nate. "Le Lys dans la Vallee," of which 
he had a high opinion, is the most falsely 
sentimental book in the world, the most 
glaring example of what manners and morals 
an ill-mannered and immoral author con- 
siders noble and elegant. " Splendeurs et 
Miseres des Courtisanes " is a phantasma- 
goria of impossible infamies, a stupid melo- 
drama played under the dreary glare of 
lime-light. These two long novels, the 
three tales known collectively as "L'His- 
toire des Treize, ,, and several shorter pieces, 
20 3 C S 



BALZAC 

among them "La Femme Abandonnee," 
"Une Fille d'Eve," and "Les Secrets de 
la Princesse de Cadignan," are so false in 
almost every particular, and, moreover, so 
needlessly disagreeable, that the world of 
art would lose nothing by their annihila- 
tion. "Beatrix," opening with a masterly 
piece of description, which is not too long 
for those who love perfection of detail, and 
with an interior scene worthy of an old 
Dutch painter, falls off presently into Bal- 
zac's worst manner, in endless, dull pages 
of sophistical meddling with questions of 
adultery. 

Other books — for instance, " Le Contrat 
de Manage" — are merely slow and painful. 
Another, "Ursule Mirouet," a favorite with 
some readers, is, perhaps, the best example 
of how Balzac's personal deficiencies have 
betrayed him. It is a study, evidently in- 
tended to be gently modulated and charm- 
ing, of a young girl brought up in maidenly 
innocence by a wise, dignified old physician, 
her uncle, in whom Balzac plainly tries to 
create a type of a gentleman. The attempt 
in both cases is clumsy. Balzac is never so 
hopelessly at sea, never puffs and splashes 
so wildly, as when, in this novel, and also 
306 



BALZAC 

in "Modeste Mignon, ,, he strives to produce 
these two indispensable types. The man 
knew no reserve himself, and how should he 
paint modesty and dignity? His books are 
a mountain of evidence against the French 
system of bringing up and marrying girls, 
their hothouse education being represented 
as weakening their moral tone and leaving 
them an easy prey for designing men; yet 
when he would depict a girl less trammelled 
than her sisters by what he plainly considers 
the absurd conventions of French society, 
he makes her pay for the gain by a loss of 
charm. In not a few of his other and less 
defective works there are passages untrue or 
meretricious, where Balzac, the man of af- 
fairs, secured temporary possession of the 
pen, and either showed his own bad taste or 
wrote to please people of bad taste, in order 
to make money. Such excellent books as 
"La Rabouilleuse ,, and "Le Pere Goriot" 
and " Le Colonel Chabert " are not easily 
spoiled, but they have grave defects, every 
one of which a man of taste, who did not 
entertain exaggerated ideas about money, 
would have avoided. Money, with ignoble 
ways of earning, hoarding, and spending 
money, is the very substance of Balzac's 
3°7 



BALZAC 

books, as it seems to have been of his per- 
sonal life. And there is nothing so inimi- 
cal to gentility, nothing so foreign to art, 
as a constant preoccupation with profit and 
loss. 

What remains that is solid and perfect in 
Balzac? Much remains. And he appears 
more wonderful when we consider how great 
the best part of him is, after so many deduc- 
tions have been made. In the first place, 
he has described more things and done it, 
on the whole, more excellently, than any 
other French novelist. It is often without 
grace or lightness of touch, to be sure; he 
spares us no details; he inventories and 
classifies even the unessential ; and for some 
readers his introductory chapters are a sort 
of purgatory or quarantine. But the true 
Balzacian relishes these passages. They are 
done with such perfect mastery! They bear 
witness to so much observation, by a mind 
endowed with rare intellectual curiosity, to 
which no human interest was foreign! They 
are unsurpassed examples of the power pos- 
sessed by keen senses, a strong imagination, 
and an exact appreciation of words, to evoke 
not mere fleeting phenomena, but intricate 
and substantial masses of reality. Balzac 
308 



BALZAC 

does not catch at life's fluttering skirts as 
she hastens on, but arrests her bravely, 
holds her fast, and looks her narrowly in 
the face. Not only do these great descrip- 
tive passages give us knowledge, surer than 
what guide-books impart, more minute than 
our own untrained eyes and ears would fur- 
nish, of French towns, and streets, houses, 
rooms, furniture, clothes, figures, faces, 
speech, and gestures, but they draw from 
us cries of pure aesthetic satisfaction, they 
are so perfectly performed. A fugue of 
Bach, a rondo of Haydn, are not more 
beautiful in workmanship. And the same 
virtuosity which gives us the opening 
chapters of "Eugenie Grandet," " Le Pere 
Goriot," "Le Cure de Tours, ,, "La Re- 
cherche de l'Absolu," "Beatrix," and "La 
Femme de Trente Ans," ennobles a thou- 
sand minor passages with bars of exquisite 
precision. 

Then, the consistency of his characters! 
We may not believe that he proportions 
goodness and wickedness, beauty and ugli- 
ness, as they exist in nature; we may think 
he takes delight in evil and allows it to pre- 
dominate; we may observe that he blunders 
and seems unfamiliar and ill at ease with 
3°9 



BALZAC 

the persons whom he would fain make gen- 
erous and simple-hearted and well-bred. 
But in spite of all this, his characters are 
true to themselves ; they hang together, they 
breathe and move and live. There are some 
exceptions, which have been mentioned, but 
we have two thousand cases in proof ! This 
is where genius plays its part. This is 
where Balzac again stands foremost among 
French novelists. 

Apart from the conventional types already 
noted, his characters are almost all not only 
firmly conceived, but lifelike. The unusual 
distinctness of his minor persons, particu- 
larly servants, has often been remarked. He 
has made few attempts to describe children; 
but his old people are as individual and as 
really old as Rembrandt's wrinkled money- 
changers. Youth, maturity, age, both sexes, 
and all ranks, professions, trades, employ- 
ments, and all temperaments, all shades of 
guilt and innocence, of ignorance and wis- 
dom, are portrayed as if Balzac had himself 
possessed a dozen lives. But where wonder 
seizes us is when he concentrates his ter- 
rible analytic gaze upon some intricate, 
strange, or passionate soul joined to a body 
inscribed fourfold, like a palimpsest, with a 
310 



BALZAC 

long life's indelible effects. Baron Hulot, 
Pere Grandet, Balthazar Claes, Philippe 
Bridau, were no easy knots to untie. And 
Balzac not only made them, but took them 
apart again. A less laborious, but a perfect 
and very delightful figure, is the Chevalier 
de Valois, in "La Vieille Fille." In a 
small number of his works Balzac attempts 
a task perhaps the most difficult of all — to 
analyze abnormal or diseased natures and 
still keep touch with earthly reality while 
attributing their peculiarities not only to 
natural, but to supernatural causes. It is a 
question whether the adventure was not un- 
fortunate. Balzac himself was satisfied, and 
many excellent judges relish, for example, 
"La Peau de Chagrin/' 

In the third place, and it is a point 
scarcely less essential than his achievement 
in description and in character creation, 
there is much discourse in Balzac that might 
have found place in essays or dissertations 
on history, civil government, social economy, 
agriculture, education, religion, and other 
high topics, but which, being more than all 
else a novelist, he embodied in his stories. 
It has been said frequently that these ex- 
cursions injure the fictions in which they 
3ii 



BALZAC 

occur. But the true Balzacian, again, de- 
lights in them and finds them profitable. 
An astonishing wealth of information is here 
cast at our feet, the very thing which, in the 
Prospectus, Balzac said he aspired to do. 
Superficial readers may be repelled, and 
indeed Balzac is never easy reading, but 
there is much matter in him which is of 
great value now and will be priceless for 
the future historian of French life. 

They might be described as philosophical 
passages were it not for the ill use Balzac 
makes of the word philosophy. He fell 
an easy victim to every pseudo-science and 
every pretentious system of thought emerg- 
ing half-formed from speculative minds, and 
veiling insufficiency with jargon. All the 
great mystifications which at that time were 
so rife in Europe found in him a curious, if 
not a self-surrendering, disciple — phrenol- 
ogy, telepathy, mesmerism, Swedenborgian- 
ism. Had the Mormons been able to catch 
his ear, be sure they would have struck his 
fancy. If by philosophy we mean large 
speculation about the common affairs of 
men, or a gift of analysis, Balzac was no 
insignificant philosopher. But of philoso- 
phy in any more definite and scholastic 
312 



BALZAC 

sense, he had but a slight tincture, for all 
his vast claims. It is hard to think he was 
a deliberate impostor in this matter; he was 
only an unconscious charlatan. But the 
result of his high opinion of his own meta- 
physical genius is that for hard-headed 
people " Louis Lambert " and " Seraphita " 
are impossible reading, and "La Peau de 
Chagrin " little short of impossible. "La 
Peau de Chagrin/' moreover, suffers from 
the faults that ruin " Splendeurs et Miseres." 
The psychological interest of " La Recherche 
de TAbsolu" is of a high order. The mind 
of Balthazar Claes is in a pathological, per- 
haps an unnatural, condition, and his perti- 
nacity in delusion wearies us, but we may 
be thankful that the allegory does not pro- 
trude excessively, as it does in "La Peau de 
Chagrin." Symbolism, which is so effec- 
tive in a very short story, as in "Jesus- 
Christ en Flandre," one of the noblest short 
stories in the world, is unendurable in a 
long work. It is worth observing that good 
fables are always brief. 

There is philosophy, however, of the 

practical sort, an attempt to express and 

co-ordinate general views of life, in many 

of Balzac's novels, and notably in "Le 

3*3 



BALZAC 

Medecin de Campagne," "Le Cure de 
Village," and "Les PaysanSo" The chief 
of these opinions — and it will be observed 
that they support each other and form 
a system — are in advocacy of constitu- 
tional monarchy, a nobility kept from de- 
cay by laws of primogeniture, development 
of French commerce by government, and 
finally Roman Catholicism recognized as the 
state religion. At the present day this may 
seem a very much discredited or at least re- 
actionary programme, but somehow Balzac 
contrived to give it a wonderful appearance 
of vitality. The first half of " Les Paysans " 
is an extreme example of how far a novel 
may not be a novel at all, and yet be inter- 
esting. Indeed, it is safe to say that who- 
ever enjoys the deeply speculative first part 
will be comparatively indifferent to the sec- 
ond part, in which the story proper at last 
begins to stir. 

But the novels considered thus far are all 
imperfect works. The perfect works have 
been reserved for the last word. Whoever 
wishes to read something of Balzac and cares 
little about toiling through the long valley 
of the shadow which the whole "Human 
Comedy," despite its cheerful name, really 
3 1 4 



BALZAC 

is, whoever wishes to enjoy Balzac, will do 
well to begin where we shall end, with the 
indubitable, the illustrious successes of the 
great master. They are numerous enough. 
No other French writer, perhaps no two or 
three of them together, can offer so long a 
list of splendid novels: "Eugenie Grandet," 
" Cesar Birotteau," "Le Cure de Tours," 
"Le Pere Goriot," "La Femme de Trente 
Ans," "Un Debut dans la Vie," "La Ra- 
bouilleuse," "Le Colonel Chabert," "L'En- 
vers de THistoire contemporaine; " and of 
short stories: "Jesus-Christ en Flandre," 
"Un Episode sous la Terreur," "Le Chef- 
d'oeuvre inconnu," "La Messe de l'Athee," 
" L' Auberge rouge," " Le Requisitionnaire," 
"El Verdugo," "Un Drame au Bord de la 
Mer." This list might easily be length- 
ened, but to shorten it were an ungracious 
task. It contains more vigorous intellectual 
substance than all the rest of French fiction 
put together. In these pages live two or 
three score men and women endowed with 
distinct individuality and at the same time 
standing as types of the race. Things vis- 
ible are represented here so that we seem to 
see them. The human mind and conscience 
are here analyzed as if they were visible 
3*5 



BALZAC 

things. Here we have few lapses of the 
artist into a mere seeker of selfish interests. 
Here are few traces of venality either of 
purpose or temperament. A high earnest- 
ness here prevails, and we feel that the 
truth is being told about life. A sense of 
awe overcomes us, as in the presence of an 
irresistible power, for through all these 
books quivers the mighty will of their cre- 
ator, in painful effort, in exalted earnest- 
ness, compelling where it cannot charm. 



316 



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